Brown family (Linda Brown, left; litigant Oliver Brown, right)
Students should be able to explain the constitutional significance of the famous Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Who were the Browns (depicted in photo) and why were they part of an NAACP lawsuit? Which approach did NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall take in attempting to convince the court to overturn the “separate but equal” tradition of the Jim Crow era in the South? What reaction did Brown and Brown II face across the nation and especially throughout the South? The story of civil rights was not merely a courtroom drama. What role did Martin Luther King, Jr. and direct action protests such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott have on the battle over integration? What was the impact of the lunch counter sit-in protests in 1960? How did the increasing tension over civil rights affect American politics?
How did historians such as Alfred Kelly and John Hope Franklin contribute to the Brown decision?
