LAD #37: Brown v. Board of Education

During the 1950s, the schools for black children were quite inferior to the schools for white children. In Topeka, Kansas, Linda Brown walked a mile to go to her black school, when a white school was seven blocks away. The Browns used McKinley Burnett of the NAACP to support Linda for her desire to integrate schools. He argued that the segregated schools made the black children feel inferior to the whites, making segregation separate but not equal. However, the defense argued that segregated schools prepared children for the segregated world. The case of Plessy v. Ferguson made it unprecedented to rule in favor of the Browns. The court eventually did rule in favor of the desegregating schools, as segregation was against the Fourteenth Amendment. The court abolished "separate but equal" and integrated the schools.