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Article: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
- Article from:
- West's Encyclopedia of American Law
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BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS
Brown v. Board of Education
, 347 U.S. 483, 47 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873, was the most significant of a series of judicial decisions overturning segregation laws
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laws that separate whites and blacks. Reversing its 1896 decision in plessy v. ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S. Ct. 1138, 41 L. Ed. 256, which established the "separate-but-equal" doctrine that found racial segregation to be constitutional, the Court unanimously decided in
Brown
that laws separating children by race in different schools violated the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment, which provides that "[n]o state shall
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deny to any person
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the ...