Board of Education ruling ranged from enthusiastic approval to bitter opposition. These web pages explore Virginia's reaction to the Brown decision, especially through the letters and petitions of individual citizens and organizations sent to elected officials. From the 1930s to the 1970s lawyers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People used the courts to achieve equal pay for African American teachers and equal facilities and curriculum for African American students. Legal segregation had existed under the 'separate but equal' doctrine, but in most instances the separate educational facilities and opportunities the Southern states offered to African Americans were inferior, not equal, to those for white Americans. The story of the Court's ruling and its aftermath is one of slow and steady chipping away at old laws and customs to achieve equal rights for all Americans. With these words, the United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision on Mayġ7, 1954, ruled that de jure school segregation was unconstitutional and paved the way for desegregation of educational institutions. Of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth

The plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions haveīeen brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived SeparateĮducational facilities are inherently unequal. We conclude that in the field of publicĮducation the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physicalįacilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive theĬhildren of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?

We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in

Effects of brown v board of education