Brwon
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
In 1950 the Reverend Oliver Brown of Topeka, Kansas, wanted to enroll his daughter, Linda Brown, in the school nearest his home (Lusane 26). The choices before him were the all-white school, only four blocks away, or the black school that was two miles away and required travel (26). His effort to enroll his daughter was spurned (26). In 1951, backed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, he filed suit against the Topeka school board and his case was joined by three other similar cases that were presented before the Supreme Court as one consolidated case (26). On May 17, 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court issued one of its most historic rulings. The single most important Supreme Court case of the twentieth century Brown v. Board of Education forever changed American society and greatly impacted the lives of all African Americans psychologically, socially, and historically. One of the arguments for the decision was based on the psychological effects of segregation on black children.
It was the pioneering work of the black psychologist Kenneth B. Clark, that the court emphasized segregated schooling fostered a sense of inferiority in black students. Clark used dolls to determine the effects of segregation on black children (Tacklach 47). He would show the children two dolls, one black and one white and ask the child which doll he or she liked best, which doll was nicer, which doll was more fun to play with (47). The results of the test disturbed Clark (47). More often than not, black children identified the white doll as being nicer and more fun to play with (47). Clark concluded, therefore, that the black children, even as young as three or four years old, had already developed a negative self-image (47). He reasoned that their disliking of the black doll indicated their dissatisfaction with their own racial background, a dissatisfaction resulting from living in a...
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