Question

In the Brown decision, the U.S. Supreme Court Decided that segregated public schools violated the 14^th Amendment. Explain their reasoning.

Answer 1

The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to and protected the civil rights of former slaves; and the Fifteenth gave adult black men the right to vote. Unfortunately, the amendments alone proved insufficient to protect African Americans’ rights.Beginning in 1877, laws curbing the civil rights of Blacks began sweeping through Southern state legislatures. These laws became known as “Jim Crow” laws after a black minstrel character. Segregation became a legal requirement and not merely a cultural norm in every Southern state as well as some Northern ones. In 1896, Homer A. Plessy challenged a Louisiana statue necessitating separate rail cars for black and white passengers. Plessy claimed the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause, which requires that a state must not “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The Supreme Court disagreed with Plessy’s argument and instead upheld the Louisiana law. In the process, the Court established the doctrine of “separate but equal.” Though the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) decision never actually used that famous phrase, the ruling upheld the constitutionality of racially separate public accommodations as long as those accommodations were otherwise equal. The lone dissenting Justice in Plessy, John Harlan, objected to the majority’s decision: “in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.”In 1954, sixty years after Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court cited a series of tests performed by two psychologists, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, demonstrating that segregation had a negative effect on the psyche of black children, instilling in them a sense of inferiority:To separate[children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to beundone.After the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared state-mandated segregation in public schools unconstitutional, the case was re-argued to determine how to correct the violations. The Court ruled for Brown and held that separate accommodations were inherently unequal and thus violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. The Court cited the psychological harm that segregation had on black children.It was the executive branch’s responsibility to enforce the decision, and it was up to state governments to actually implement integration in practice. Congress could have tied funding to states passing laws that banned segregation. The president could have issued an executive order or (as was the case with the Little Rock 9) federalize the state’s National Guard and have the troops escort the children to school.