Michael Harriot: Everything you know about Brown v. Board of Education is wrong [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://thegrio.com/2024/05/17/everything-you-know-about-brown-v-board-of-education-is-wrong/

Seventy years ago, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the Brown v. Board of Education decision, finding that racially segregated public schools are unconstitutional.

The court’s ruling settled a lawsuit filed by Black parents fighting segregation laws in Topeka, Kansas. Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall argued the case on behalf of the plaintiffs as part of the NAACP Legal Defense Funds’ effort to overturn the 60-year-old “separate but equal” doctrine. On May 17, 1954 the SCOTUS issued the unanimous decision, forever desegregating public schools in America. Today, the landmark judicial case is hailed as one of the most significant victories of the Civil Rights Movement. There’s only one problem with this narrative:

None of that ever happened.

As with most versions of Black history, there are two versions of the story of Brown v. Board of Education. There’s the story you read in your seventh-grade social studies book that illustrates America’s slow but steady racial progress. While that uplifting tale is based on an almost true story, there is also another, lesser-known version:

The truth.

On the 70th anniversary of this history-defining case, here are 10 unwhitewashed facts you probably didn’t know about Brown v. Board of Education.

1. You’re saying it wrong.

The first (and maybe most important fact) about Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas et al., is that it should actually be called Briggs v. Elliott.

*snip*