A Historical View of U.S. Immigration Policy
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In a unanimous ruling in the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education
of Topeka, Kansas, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal"
school facilities for black and white children were unconstitutional.
This was a direct reversal of the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson case in which
a majority of the court ruled separate but equal facilities for public
accomodations were constitutional. The Brown vs. Board of Education ruling
was based on the 14th Ammendment to the Constitution, which says that states
may not deny equal protection under the law to any person within their
jurisdiction.
This ruling provided the impetus for efforts to achieve equal treatment
in other areas for blacks, leading to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
One of the attorneys arguing for desegregation was Thurgood Marshall, who
later became the first African American justice of the United States
Supreme Court.
This ruling is also important in sociology because it is one of the
most famous cases in which sociological research influenced a Supreme Court Decision.
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