Brown V. Board of Education

Interpretation/ Solution
    America during the 1950’s was not so much a land of the free and the brave but a land of the suppressed and discriminated, segregation was the norm. Ideally, all schools should have been equally set up and equally administered but this was not the case as we now know, most of the black schools that existed during this time were far below the standard of their white counterparts. All across the country several black students protested and even made the extremely difficult and daring decision of attending a white school. Take the case of Linda Brown in Topeka, Kansas who had to journey one mile down a railroad in order to reach her “black” school while just seven blocks from her house there was a school. However, she could not attend the aforementioned school because of her skin color seeing as this school was entirely composed of white skinned students at the time. Needless to say Oliver Brown, Linda’s father, sought justice and initiated what came to be known as Brown v. Board of Education, a case that made it all the way to the Supreme Court. The Board of Education argued that segregation in schools facilitated the understanding of and prepared black children for the segregation they would face as time went on and they got older. In saying this, the board essentially stated that there was no way for blacks to escape segregation and so even as small children they should be exposed to it because that is what their future would inadvertently consist of. This might have angered some because in short, it meant that blacks would forever be oppressed. Another argument made by the board was that black schools weren’t at all harmful to black children and that this was exemplified by those like Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, and George Washington Carver. However, in saying this they overlooked the many others who failed to receive an education or who received an education far more inferior than that given to white students of the...