“The most gratifying thing…is the unanimous decision and the language used—once and for all it’s decided completely.”
–Thurgood Marshall
In many parts of the country, blacks and whites are separated by law—segregated—in almost all aspects of life. In 1896, the Supreme Court said this was constitutional. The rule’s called “separate but equal.”
But separate is rarely equal.
In the South, black men and women sit at the back of the bus and in “colored only” waiting rooms. They can’t stay at “white” hotels or eat at “white” restaurants. Across America, black children attend neglected schools.
Today, in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, the Court unanimously struck down school segregation.
“Separate educational facilities,” they say, are “inherently unequal.”
