Maricopa Community Colleges

Office of Equity, Opportunity and Engagement

 

Brown Board

On the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education ...

This year, the United States marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation ruling: On May 17, 1954, the Court unanimously ruled that it was unconstitutional to separate students on the basis of race.

"Brown broke the back of American apartheid," Theodore Shore, associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said in a CNN news report. "It was a case that finally breathed life into the 14th Amendment for African-Americans."

A groundbreaking case, Brown not only overturned the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had declared "separate but equal facilities" constitutional, but also provided the legal foundation of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Although widely perceived as a revolutionary decision, Brown was in fact the culmination of changes both in the Court and in the strategies of the Civil Rights Movement.

browncourtThe Supreme Court had become more liberal in the years since it decided Plessy, largely due to appointments by Democratic Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Though still all-white, the Court had issued decisions in the 1930s and 1940s that rendered racial separation illegal in certain situations.

Now consolidated under the name Brown v. Board of Education, five cases came before the Supreme Court in December, 1952. The lead attorney on the case, Thurgood Marshall, and his colleagues wrote that states had no valid reason to impose segregation, that racial separation — no matter how equal the facilities — caused psychological damage to Black children, and that "restrictions or distinctions based upon race or color" violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The opinion, written by Warren and read on May 17, 1954, was short and straightforward. It echoed Marshall's expert witnesses, stating that for African American schoolchildren, segregation "generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone." The decision went on to say that segregation had no valid purpose, was imposed to give Blacks lower status, and was therefore unconstitutional based on the Fourteenth Amendment.

http://brownvboard.org/summary/

The MCCCD EEO/AA Office supports and enforces all nondiscrimination laws; and ensures that all services, programs, and hiring practices and procedures are administered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability or veteran status.  Further information regarding MCCCD's Nondiscrimination Policy may be obtained by visiting MCCCD Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Office Website.

The EEO/AA Office actively participates in promoting diversity awareness and cultural competency in all aspects of employee life within Maricopa. For further information on diversity initiatives or the Governing Board Diversity Goal, please visit the websites.