brown vs board
...ses in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. Linda Brown had been denied admission to an elementary school in Topeka because she was black. Brought together under the Brown designation were companion cases from South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware, all of which involved the same basic question: Does the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment prohibit racial segregation in the public schools? It was not until the late 1940's that the Court began to insist on equality of treatment, but it did not squarely face the constitutionality of the "separate but equal" doctrine until it decided the Brown case. In a brief, unanimous opinion delivered by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court declared that: "separate education facilities are inherently unequal" and that racial segregation violates the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. In a moving passage, the chief justice argued that separating children in the schools so...