Summary
In 1950, seven-year-old Linda Brown of Topeka, Kansas, had to leave at 7:40 each morning to get to Monroe School by 9:00. Part of her commute required a walk through a railroad switching yard. Linda didn't understand why she had to make this long, dangerous commute when the Sumner Elementary School was only six blocks away. "My mother explained that it was because of the color of our skin," Linda said. "As a child, I did not comprehend what difference that could possibly make." In the South and other parts of the country, black students were required to attend "colored" schools. Black attorney Thurgood Marshall understood the disadvantages black students suffered due to segregated education. Not only were colored schools woefully underfunded, black students developed feelings of inferiority.For years, Marshall and other civil rights lawyers fought to abolish what had been called "separate but equal" schooling. In 1954, they achieved their dream. In a decision that rocked the South, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional. "We hit the jackpot!" Marshall declared. Brown v. Board of Education explores the details of one of the most important Supreme Court decisions of all time. The book takes you from Marshall's dangerous fact-finding mission in 1933 to the turbulent aftermath of Brown, when white Southerners doggedly resisted the decision--sometime with dynamite.