Brown v Board of Ed. Topeka Kansas (1954) by Alexes Mercado http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/early-civilrights/brown.html The 14th Amendment states: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
In the early 1950's, racial segregation in public schools was normal all across America. Although all the schools were …show more content…

The Courts felt they were put in a difficult position. On the one hand, the judges agreed with the expert witnesses; and in their decision, they wrote: “Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children...A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn.”
On the other hand, a previous case of Plessy v. Furguson allowed separate but equal school systems for blacks and whites, and no Supreme Court ruling had yet overturned the Plessy case. Therefore, because Plessy had held precedence, the Courts felt compelled to rule in favor of the Board of Education.
The NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court on October 1, 1951. This time, their case was combined with other cases that challenged school segregation in other states such as: South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. The Supreme Court first heard the case on December 9, 1952, but failed to reach a decision. Unable to come to a solution, the Court decided to hear the case again on December 7-8, 1953. This time, the Court requested that both sides discuss "the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868." The Court now had to make a decision based - not on whether or not the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment had desegregated schools in mind when they wrote the amendment in 1868 - but based on whether or not desegregated schools deprived black children