The Brown Family

In 1950, Oliver Brown took his daughter Linda to register her at the neighborhood elementary school four blocks away from her home in Topeka, Kansas. He was denied. Instead, his daughter had to walk in the cold, eventually crossing a busy avenue, to get to a school bus that would take her 2 miles across town to an all black school.  Mr. Brown did not agree with this situation, and he did not feel that his child should be denied the chance to go to the neighborhood school based only on the color of his skin.  Along with 12 other families, Mr. Brown filed a joint lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education.  The case was argued in a federal court in Topeka but was decided in favor of the Topeka Board of Education. The case at this point focused on black children being able to attend their neighborhood schools rather than traveling to all black schools.  Later, when the case was combined with several other cases from across the country and appealed to the US Supreme Court, the focus included a look at psychological damage done to the children by having them in segregated schools in addition to the investigation of dangerous travel situations taking place for black children to attend school. 

On May 17, 1954, four years after Mr. Brown tried to register his daughter in their local school, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision in Brown v Board of Education.  In the decision, Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that, “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Linda Brown never saw the benefit of desegregation as an elementary school student, though. She finished elementary school in the spring of 1954, and her junior high and high school were already integrated by race (although black students could not participate in the same activities as white students). However, her sisters and all the other children of this country did benefit from the efforts of her father and other concerned parents, and students today continue to benefit from the Brown v. Board of Education case as US schools move “From Topeka Toward Tomorrow” by embracing multiculturalism in the classroom and our society.

Linda’s father died in 1961 at age of 42.  Today, Linda Brown Thompson and her sister Cheryl Brown Henderson travel and lecture about the Brown v. Board of Education case and the legacy left by the historical decision.

Kutztown University of Pennsylvania is part of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education