This 1954 statement, issued by a group of black educators, strongly endorses the Supreme Court's Brown ruling.
The Fourteenth Amendment established the equal protection clause, later used in key desegregation cases.
The Supreme Court's landmark opinion overturned its earlier ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson and declared segregated schools unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court's opinion in Brown II reflects the struggle between federal and state governments on how and when school desegregation would occur.
This collection of excerpts from legislation and court decisions documents key phases of the legal struggle to gain and implement equal education.
This segment from American Experience: Simple Justice profiles Charles Houston's strategy for attacking segregation and how he trained the legal team that eventually argued the Brown case.
This segment from American Experience: Simple Justice documents Dr. Kenneth Clark's doll test, which became important social science evidence in the Brown case.
This segment from American Experience: Simple Justice captures the legal issues and opening arguments in Brown v. Board of Education.
This segment from American Experience: Simple Justice explores the issue at the heart of Brown v. Board of Education: whether the Fourteenth Amendment applied to segregated schools.
This segment from American Experience: Simple Justice reenacts Thurgood Marshall's closing statement in Brown v. Board of Education.
This segment from American Experience: Simple Justice explores the dynamics and arguments among the Supreme Court justices who ruled in Brown v. Board of Education.
This section is intended to supplement the curricula, textbooks, and materials you currently use for lessons on the civil rights struggle. The teacher-developed resources in the section will enhance the classroom experience for both you and your students.
Explore the variety of teaching strategies and guidelines, lesson plans and document-based questions (DBQs), and information about museum objects and other primary sources. You might get started by showing the video, in which Smithsonian curators examine a photograph of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. You can then help the students examine other historic photographs.
