All were NAACP-sponsored cases. The Davis case, the only one of five cases stemming from a student protest, began when 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns organized and led a strike involving 450 students at Moton High School. [25] Gebhart is the only case in which a trial court, upheld by the Delaware Supreme Court, found discrimination unlawful; In all other cases, the plaintiffs lost because the original courts found the discrimination to be lawful. When the Supreme Court was seized of the cases in 1952, it took all five cases as Brown v. School Board. Marshall personally represented the case before the Court. Although he raised various legal issues in the appeal, the most common was that separate school systems for blacks and whites were inherently unequal and therefore violated the “equality protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In addition, relying on sociological tests such as that of sociologist Kenneth Clark and other data, he argued that segregated school systems tend to make black children feel inferior to white children, and therefore such a system should not be legally allowed. Emboldened by its victory in the Gaines case, the NAACP continued to address legally sanctioned racial discrimination in higher education. In 1946, an African-American named Heman Sweat applied to the “white” law school at the University of Texas. Hoping that Sweat wouldn`t have to go after the “white” law school if there was already a “black” school, the state hastily set up an underfunded “black” law school elsewhere on the university`s campus.
At this point, Sweat enlisted the services of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and sued for admission to the university`s “white” law school. He argued that the education he received at “black” law school was not of the same academic calibre as the education he would receive if he attended a “white” law school. When the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1950, the court unanimously agreed, citing glaring discrepancies between the university`s law school (the School for Whites) and the hastily created school for blacks. In other words, the “black” law school was “separate” but not “equal.” As in Murray, the court concluded that the only appropriate remedy for this situation was to admit Sweat to the university`s law school. Under Walter Reuther`s leadership, the United Auto Workers donated $75,000 to fund the NAACP`s efforts before the Supreme Court. [27] NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall, who was subsequently appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, argued the case on behalf of the plaintiffs before the Supreme Court. Assistant Attorney General Paul Wilson — later professor emeritus of law at the University of Kansas — led the state`s ambivalent defense in his first appellate argument.
However, minorities and members of the civil rights movement were inspired by the Brown decision, even without concrete instructions for implementation. Proponents of legal activism believed that the Supreme Court had used its position appropriately to adjust the basis of the constitution to solve new problems in new times. The Warren Court maintained this course for the next 15 years, deciding cases that significantly affected not only race relations, but also the administration of criminal justice, the conduct of the political process, and the separation of church and state. Since these are class actions, because of the broad applicability of this decision and the great diversity of local conditions, the wording of the decrees in these cases raises problems of considerable complexity. In the renewed argument, consideration of appropriate facilities was necessarily subordinated to the main issue – the constitutionality of segregation in public education. We have now proclaimed that such segregation is a denial of the equal protection of the law. In order for us to have the full support of the parties in the development of the decrees, the cases will be put back on the agenda and the parties will be invited to present new arguments on questions 4 and 5 previously proposed by the Court for the new pleading of this mandate. The Attorney General of the United States is again invited to participate. State Attorneys General which require or authorize segregation in public education may, on request, also act as amici curiae until September 15, 1954, and file briefs until October 1, 1954. In each of these cases, Black minors, through their legal representatives, seek court assistance in gaining admission to public schools in their community on a non-segregationist basis.
In each case, they were denied access to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting racial segregation. This segregation is intended to deprive plaintiffs of the same protections as those afforded by the Fourteenth Amendment. In each of the cases other than Delaware, a three-judge federal district court denied the plaintiffs the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine adopted by that court in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537. According to this doctrine, equal treatment is granted when the same facilities are essentially made available to races, even if those facilities are separate. In Delaware, the Delaware Supreme Court upheld this doctrine, but ordered that plaintiffs be admitted to white schools because of their superiority over black schools. Disappointed that the University of Maryland Law School rejected black applicants solely because of their race, Thurgood Marshall (who himself was rejected by that law school because of its policy of racial acceptance) decided to challenge this practice in Maryland`s court system. In a Baltimore court in 1935, Marshall argued that Donald Gaines Murray was just as qualified as white applicants to attend University of Maryland Law School, and that he had been rejected solely because of his race. In addition, he argued that since the “black” law schools Murray would otherwise have to attend were nowhere near the same academic calibre as the university`s law school, the university violated the principle of “separate but equal.” In addition, Marshall argued that the differences between “white” and “black” law schools were so great that the only remedy would be to allow students like Murray to attend the university`s law school. The Baltimore City Court agreed, and the university appealed to the Maryland Court of Appeals.