Brown vs. Board of Education

In Plessy versus Ferguson, it was decided that schools could be segregated based on race, as long as the public places were equal. In Topeka, Kansas, a black third-grader named Linda Brown, wanted to go to the White school down the street not the black school. Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused. The court heard Linda Brown’s case and decided that "...if the colored children are denied the experience in school of associating with white children, who represent 90 percent of our national society in which these colored children must live, then the colored child's curriculum is being greatly curtailed. The Topeka curriculum or any school curriculum cannot be equal under segregation." People argued that black schools prepared blacks for the real world. The court decided that “Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children...A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn.” Brown and her father then took the case to the Supreme Court and decided that the “separate but equal” schools needed to be integrated again. Although the case did integrate schools, it did not integrate other public places like restaurants, and African Americans were still not accepted in public.