Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site, in Topeka, Kansas, commemorates the landmark school desegregation decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. In the decision, reached on May 17, 1954, the court declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court found that segregated schools violated the 14th Amendment, which forbids the states to deny any citizen the rights granted by federal law.
Exhibits at the site’s visitor center provide information on the Brown decision, officially called Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, et al., and its role in the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Congress authorized the establishment of the historic site in 1992.
The visitor center is inside the Monroe Elementary School, at the corner of 15th and Monroe streets. For many years, the Monroe school was one of only four schools that African American children in Topeka were allowed to attend.
In 1951, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed suit on behalf of African American families in Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. In each case, African American parents had been denied the right to enroll their children in schools designated for white children, even if the schools were closer to their homes. The U.S. Supreme Court grouped the cases together, and they became known by the name of one of the parents from Topeka, Oliver L. Brown, whose daughter, a student at Monroe, had not been allowed to enroll in an all-white school near her home. The decision handed down in the Brown case ended laws in 21 states that allowed racial segregation in public schools.
See also Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka .
