Separate Is Not Equal - Brown v. Board of Education

Smithsonian National Museum of American History Behring Center



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Segregated America
The Battleground
Legal Campaign
Five Communities Change a Nation
The Decision
  • Defenders of Segregation
  • Segregationists’ Argument
  • Challengers of Segregation
  • Integrationists’ Argument
  • Reaching a Decision
  • Court’s Decision
  • Timeline
Legacy
NAACP lawyers

The Challengers of Segregation

The civil rights lawyers of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund were younger than their adversaries and had far fewer resources to prepare their cases. Much of their work was done at the law schools of Howard and Columbia universities.


The Plessy v. Ferguson decision, they argued, had misinterpreted the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment—the authors of this amendment had not intended to allow segregated schools. Nor did existing law consider the harmful social and psychological effects of segregation. Integrated schools, they asserted, were a fundamental right for all Americans.

Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall coordinated all of the plaintiff attorneys and presented arguments in the South Carolina case. A graduate of Howard University School of Law, he was the director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. After the Brown case, he argued several other civil rights cases before the Supreme Court.

From 1961 to 1965 Marshall served as a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and as solicitor general from 1965 to 1967. In that year President Lyndon Johnson appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served until his retirement in 1991.
(Courtesy of Library of Congress)


Robert Carter

Robert Carter

Robert Carter presented the arguments in the Kansas case. He attended Howard University School of Law and completed graduate studies at Columbia University. After encountering widespread racism in the army during World War II, he decided to join the NAACP legal team in 1944 and became Marshall’s key assistant.

From 1956 to 1968 Carter became the general counsel of the NAACP where he continued to be an aggressive advocate for civil rights. In 1972 he was appointed U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of New York.
(Courtesy of Library of Congress)


Spottswood W. Robinson III

Spottswood W. Robinson III

Spottswood W. Robinson III argued the Virginia case. A graduate of Howard University School of Law, Robinson entered private practice with his partner, Oliver W. Hill, in 1939. At one point, Robinson and Hill had ongoing lawsuits with 75 school districts. Robinson was appointed dean of Howard’s law school in 1960. In 1966 he was named chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals and served until his retirement in 1989.
(Courtesy of Library of Congress)

Louis L. Redding

Louis L. Redding

Louis L. Redding presented a portion of the arguments in the Delaware cases. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1929 and became Delaware’s first African American attorney. After the 1954 decision, he continued his legal practice in Wilmington and his commitment to defending civil rights cases. For the rest of his life, he was considered Delaware’s leading civil rights attorney.
(Courtesy of Library of Congress)

Jack Greenberg

Jack Greenberg

Jack Greenberg presented part of the arguments in the Delaware cases. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1948. After Brown, Greenberg eventually replaced Thurgood Marshall as the leading counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

In 1968 he helped found the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund and since then has helped establish other global humanitarian organizations. In recent years, Greenberg has written several books and is currently professor emeritus at Columbia Law School.
(Courtesy of Library of Congress)


George E. C. Hayes

George E. C. Hayes

George E. C. Hayes argued the first portion of the Washington, D.C., case. A graduate of Howard University’s law school in 1918, he was for many years a faculty member there, as well as chief legal counsel for the university. He also served on the District of Columbia school board.

After Bolling v. Sharpe, Hayes argued several civil rights and civil liberties cases. In 1954 he represented Annie Lee Moss, a black woman falsely accused of being a Communist, before Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee.


James Nabrit, Jr

James Nabrit, Jr

James Nabrit Jr. argued the second part of the Washington, D.C., case. A graduate of Northwestern University Law School, he joined Howard’s law faculty in 1936 and helped establish the school’s coursework in civil rights law. He served as president of Howard University in the 1960s and deputy ambassador to the United Nations in 1966.
(Courtesy of Library of Congress)


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