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INTRODUCTION
On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court handed down perhaps its most significant ruling of all time. In a unanimous 9-0 opinion in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (Brown I) (1954), the Court held that the de jure segregation of public education based on race deprived minority children of equal educational opportunities in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. A year later, in Brown II (1955), the Court set about dismantling segregated school systems. While subsequent rulings attacked de facto and de jure segregation in the wider arena of American society, Brown I remains unchallenged as the catalyst for systemic change. Beginning with school desegregation efforts and culminating in the civil rights movement and a generation of heightened consciousness for African Americans and other disenfranchised groups, Brown I spawned an era of equal educational opportunities.
In light of the Supreme Court's monumental ruling in Brown I, this article briefly discusses more than three dozen of the cases involving court-ordered public school desegregation decided in the 40 years since 1954. Further, it provides a detailed commentary and analysis of the Court's leading opinions.
A LEGAL HISTORY OF PUBLIC SCHOOL DESEGREGATION
The history of the Supreme Court's involvement in school desegregation can be divided into four periods: the first spanning the decade from 1954 to 1964, the next from 1965 to 1979, the third from 1980 to 1989, and the last covering the early years of the 1990s.
A Decade of "All Deliberate Speed": 1954-1964
Flushed with victories in Sweatt v. Painter (1950) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education (1950)--companion cases that prohibited interschool and intraschool segregation, respectively, in higher education--the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was set to launch a frontal attack on racial segregation in the public schools. Accordingly, its chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall, and his team of NAACP attorneys laid the groundwork for Brown I. In light of the central role Brown I occupies in American history, this case will be examined in greater detail here than the other rulings succeeding it.
Brown I is cited as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas because the lead case was initiated there. It actually involved four class-action...