This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision -- the landmark court case that declared the "separate but equal" practice unconstitutional in the United States.
Brown v. Board of Education itself was not a single case, but rather a coordinated group of five lawsuits against school districts in Kansas, South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
The victory occurred after a hard-fought, multi-year campaign to persuade all nine justices to overturn the “separate but equal” ruling decided in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that allowed the use of segregation laws by states and local governments.
This campaign to challenge the doctrine was conceived in the 1930s by Charles Hamilton Houston, then Dean of Howard Law School, and brilliantly executed in a series of cases over the next two decades by his star pupil, Thurgood Marshall - the Legal Defense Fund’s first Director-Counsel and later, the first African American to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
On May 17, 1954, the unanimous decision in the Brown v. Board of Education became one of the most celebrated victories in a long, storied history of fighting for civil rights and marks a defining moment in U.S. history.
On April 18 - 19, 2024, the University of Kansas and the Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park, Topeka, Kansas present BROWN V. BOARD AT 70: LOOKING BACK AND STRIVING FORWARD - a two-day conference. Register for the livestream via their website.
Sources: KU.edu; LDF.com; Wikipedia.org
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