When did Brown v. Board of Education begin and end?

Brown v. Board of Education, (1954) was initiated in 1950, in Topeka, Kansas, and moved through the lower courts for two years before the Supreme Court granted plaintiffs' petition for writ of certiorari on October 8, 1952. The Court combined Brown with a South Carolina school segregation case, Briggs et al. v. Elliott et al., and noted there were additional cases in appellate court that were likely to be added later (two more were added, for a total of four; a fifth case was heard separately because it concerned segregation in the District of Columbia, federal territory).

The four cases consolidated underBrown:

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 US 483 (1954) (Kansas)

Briggs v. Elliot (South Carolina)*

Davis v. County Board of Education of Prince Edward County (Virginia)

Gebhart v. Belton (Delaware)

Companion case, heard separately:

Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 US 497 (1954)

*Briggs v. Elliot, 342 US 350 (1952) originally came before the court in 1952, but the decision was vacated and the case remanded back to US District Court for disposition.

Thurgood Marshall, Chief Counsel for the NAACP, first argued the case on December 9, 1952, but was compelled to repeat his argument a year later, on December 8, 1953, because the Justices required the lawyers write briefs of their opinions on whether Congress had intended the Constitution to provide for segregated schools.

Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the court's unanimous verdict on May 17, 1954, declaring segregation in education a violation of the students' 14th Amendment guarantee of Equal Protection under the law.

Case Citation:

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 US 483 (1954)