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More Than Brown: How Four Cases Became One

By Arnethia Ellis
Black College Wire

Photo credit: Brownat50.org Oliver Hill, Judge Robert Carter, Dr. Genna Rae McNeil, the lawyers who defeated "separate but equal," at Howard University School of Law in January.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., involved more than the Rev. Oliver Brown and his daughter, Linda. It was a combination of cases representing children from various states who wanted to receive a quality education but had been denied one simply because they were black. Here is a look at each of the cases:

Brown v. Board of Education

The case known today as Brown v. Board of Education was preceded by 11 school integration cases in Kansas between 1881 and 1949. In response to the substandard conditions in black schools in Kansas, the local chapter of the NAACP took action against the school system to ensure that black children received a quality education. In 1950, NAACP officials joined with the parents of 20 children who had been refused enrollment in local white schools. Each plaintiff would attempt to enroll at white schools, and after being denied, would report back to the NAACP.

This information was used to file a lawsuit against the Topeka School Board. Oliver Brown was assigned to be the lead plaintiff, and on Feb. 28, 1951, the case of Oliver L. Brown et. al. vs. The Board of Education of Topeka et. al. was filed. The District Court ruled in favor of the school board, and the case was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was combined with other NAACP cases from Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision that separating children in public schools solely because of their race was unconstitutional and a violation of the 14th Amendment. It was considered a tremendous gain for the African American community.

Briggs v. Elliot

In Clarendon County, S.C., black students sometimes walked eight miles each way to school, because no transportation was available. The Rev. J.A. DeLaine, a local teacher and minister, decided he would try to secure buses for these children.

After being refused by Clarendon County school officials, DeLaine and parents in the community raised money to buy an old bus, which turned out to be more burden than solution. After numerous petitions and letter-writing campaigns, Harold Boulware and Thurgood Marshall filed the case of Levi Pearson v. County Board of Education on March 16, 1948. However, the case was dismissed because Pearson paid taxes in a district other than where his children attended school.

In 1949, DeLaine raised enough money to file a second case the following year with the help of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The case was Briggs v. Elliot.

Bolling v. Sharp

In 1951, activist Gardner Bishop filed a suit on behalf of 11 African American students who were refused admission to John Phillip Sousa High School in the District of Columbia. Bishop took 11 black students to the new high school for whites on Sept. 11, 1950, with hopes of touring the school.

They were denied permission to tour the premises. Bishop decided to take his grievances to lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston, who worked on the case independently; it was not a NAACP case. Houston suffered a heart attack while preparing the case, but James Nabrit Jr. took over and filed Bolling v. Sharpe, named for Spottswood Thomas Bolling, one of the children denied admission to Sousa.

Although initially unsuccessful, the Bolling case was eventually combined in the case known as Brown v. Board of Education.

Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County

The situation in Virginia was slightly different from that in other communities fighting discrimination in the classroom. The Farmville Colored Women�s Club raised enough money to add grades 9 to 12 to Robert Moton High School. Previously, African Americans completed their high school education with the 11th grade. As a result, black students from neighboring counties began to come to Farmville to attend Moton High, which created the need for a new building.

The new building was never adequate and the substandard conditions prompted a student strike in 1951; Barbara Johns was one of the main organizers. Johns, along with classmate Carrie Stokes, sought legal counsel from the local NAACP chapter. NAACP lawyer Oliver Hill began taking action on their behalf, and the students returned to class on May 7, 1951.

In federal court, Spottswood Robinson, a colleague of Oliver Hill, filed the case known as Dorothy E. Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County. Davis was the first student listed in the suit.

Belton v. Gebhart (Bulah v. Gebhart)

This case involved two schools in two different communities with the same problem. The first case focused on Howard High School, located in an �undesirable� section of Wilmington, Del. Students, by law, could not attend Howard High. Many factors, including distance, class size and teacher qualifications, angered parents in this community. Students also had to travel several blocks to the school�s annex to take vocational training courses. In March 1951, eight parents sought counsel from lawyer Louis Redding.

The second case occurred in Hockessin, Del. Sarah Bulah drove her daughter, Shirley Barbara, two miles to a one-room segregated school for black children. Bulah decided to voice to the Department of Public Instruction and to the governor her concerns about the condition of her daughter�s school and the lack of transportation.

In response, school officials stated that �no bus transportation could be provided because �colored� children could not ride on a bus serving white children.� As a result, Mrs. Bulah made an appointment with Redding.

Arnethia Ellis is a 2004 graduate of Howard University. Her story was part of a �Shades of Brown� project involving three classes in the Howard University Department of Journalism.

Posted May 24, 2004