Today in history we go back to 68 years ago when one ruling was a cornerstone victory for civil rights. The case was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the board of Education of Topeka after his daughter was denied entry to an all-white elementary school. In his argument, black schools were not equal to white schools which violated the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment. The lawsuit was classified with other cases under one case, “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.”
The ruling in 1954 which was unanimous declared that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. This set the precedent that “separate-but-equal” education and other services were not, in fact, equal at all.
