An icon against racial segregation in US schools
Linda Brown, a woman from Kansas who in the 1950s named the dispute that ended racial segregation in US schools, has died this weekend at the age of 76, according to her hometown newspaper The Topeka Capital Journal. When he was only 9 years old, she became a civil rights icon for the Brown vs. Board of Education case (Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education), which ended with separate schools for whites and blacks.
But the Brown is the last name of her father, who was the one who filed the suit. Because she was a woman and a girl, two more reasons for discrimination. Born in Topeka, the capital of Kansas, Brown was 9 years old when her father, the Reverend Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in 1950 at the primary public school closest to the family home, which was reserved for whites. It was the Summer School. Little Linda was rejected for her skin color and forced to attend a school for blacks, much further from her home. At that time, most of the southern states of the United States had the possibility of separating students on racial grounds.
Linda's father appealed the Kansas law that allowed cities with more than 15,000 residents to establish separate schools. This lengthy judicial case that was opened was supported and promoted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization founded in 1909 to defend the rights of blacks. Four years later, the historic "Brown v. Board of Education" ruling occurred, with which the Supreme Court ended the "segregated but equal" doctrine that had been in American public education since 1896. It was May 17, 1954
The Supreme Court ruled that "separating (black children) from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their position in the community that can affect their hearts and minds in an unlikely way to reverse" He also concluded that segregation was a practice that violated the "equal protection" clause in the Constitution. Although Brown put the name, the litigation grouped numerous cases compiled by the NAACP of rejected African-American students in educational institutions around the country.
In an interview with PBS in 1985, following the 30th anniversary of the sentence, Brown said she "felt" that the decision of the Supreme Court had "had an impact on all facets of minority life throughout the country." "I think of it in terms of what it has done for our young people, in the elimination of that feeling of second class citizenship, I think it has made the dreams, hopes and aspirations of our young people greater today," she added.
According to The Washington Post, Summer School, which had rejected its registration in 1950, tried to deny it again on the same day in 1954 when the Supreme Court prohibited segregation.