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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka -- Opinion -- 387 U.S. 483 Page 6 of 7

(1950). The three-judge District Court, convened under 28 U. S. C. [??] 2281 and 2284, denied the requested relief. The court found the Negro
school inferior in physical plant, curricula, and transportation, and ordered the defendants forthwith to provide substantially equal curricula and
transportation and to "proceed with all reasonable diligence and dispatch to remove" the inequality in physical plant. But, as in the South Carolina
case, the court sustained the validity of the contested provisions and denied the plaintiffs admission to the white schools during the equalization
program. 103 F.Supp. 337. The case is here on direct appeal under 28 U. S. C. [?] 1253.

In the Delaware case, Gebhart v. Belton, the plaintiffs are Negro children of both elementary and high school age residing in New Castle County.
They brought this action in the Delaware Court of Chancery to enjoin enforcement of provisions in the state constitution and statutory code which
require the segregation of Negroes and whites in public schools. Del. Const., Art X, [?] 2; Del. Rev. Code [?] 2631 (1935). The Chancellor gave
judgment for the plaintiffs and ordered their immediate admission to schools previously attended only by white children, on the ground that the
Negro schools were inferior with respect to teacher training, pupil-teacher ratio, extracurricular activities, physical plant, and time and distance
involved in travel. 87 A. 2d 862. The Chancellor also found that segregation itself results in an inferior education for Negro children (see note 10,
infra), but did not rest his decision on that ground. Id., at 865. The Chancellor's decree was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Delaware, which
intimated, however, that the defendants might be able to obtain a modification of the decree after equalization of the Negro and white schools had
been accomplished. 91 A. 2d 137, 152. The defendants, contending only that the Delaware courts had erred in ordering the immediate admission
of the Negro plaintiffs to the white schools, applied to this Court for certiorari. The writ was granted, 344 U.S. 891. The plaintiffs, who were
successful below, did not submit a crossd-petition. (Return to opinion)

2. 344 U.S. 1, 141, 891 (Return to opinion)

3. 345 U.S. 972. The Attorney General of the United States participated both Terms as amicus curiae. (Return to opinion)

4. Gor a general study of the development of public education prior to the Amendment, see Butts and Cremin, A History of Education in
American Culture (1953), Pts. I, II; Cubberley, Public Education in the United States (1934 ed.), cc. II-XII. School practices current at the time of
the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment are described in Butts and Cremin, suptra, at 269-275; Cubberley, supra, at 288-339, 408-431; Knight,
Public Education in the South (1922), cc. VIII, IX. See also H. Ex. Doc. No. 315, 41st Cong., 2d Sess. (1871). although the demand for free
public schools followed substantially the same pattern in both the North and the South, the development in the South did not begin to gain
momentum until about 1850, some twenty years after that in the North. The reasons for the somewhat slower development in the South (e.g., the
rural character of the South and the different regional attitudes toward state assistance) are well explained in Cubberley, suptra, at 408-423. In the
country as a whole, but particularly in the South, the War virtually stopped all progress in public education. Id., at 427-428. The low status of
Negro education in all sections of the country, both before and immediately after the War, is described in Beale, A History of Freedom of
Teaching in American Schools (1941), 112-132, 175-195. Compulsory school attendance laws were not generally adopted until after the
ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, and it was not until 1918 that such laws were in force in all the states. Cubberley, supra. at 563-565.
(Return to opinion)

5. Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 67-72 (1873); Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 307-308 (1880):
"It ordains that no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, or deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. What is this but declaring that the law in the States shall be the same for the black as for the white;
that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the States, and, in regard to the colored race, for whose protection
the amendment was primarily designed, that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color? The words of the
amendment, it is true, are prohibitory, but they contain a necessary implication of a positive immunity, or right, most valuable to the colored race,
-- the right to exemption from unfriendly legislation against them distinctively as colored, -- excemption from legal discriminations, implying
inferiority in civil society, lessening the security of their enjoyment of the rights which others enjoy, and discriminations which are steps towards
reducing them to the condition of a subjecty race."
See also Virginia v. Rives, 100 U.S. 313, 318 (1880); Ex parte Virginia, 100 U.S. 339, 344-345 (1880). (Return to opinion)

6. The doctrine apparently originated in Roberts v. City of Boston, 59 Mass. 198, 206 (1850), upholding school segregation against attacks as being
violative of a state constitutional guarantee of equality. Segregation in Boston publi schools were eliminated in 1855. Mass. Acts 1855, c. 256.
But elsewhere in the North segregation in public education has persisted in some communities until recent years. It is apparent that such
segregation has long been a nationwide problem, not merely one of sectional concern. (Return to opinion)

7. See also Berea College v. Kentucky, 211 U.S. 45 (1908). (Return to opinion)

8. In the Cumming case, Negro taxpayers sought an injunction requiring the defendant school board to discontinue the operation of a high school
for white children until the board resumed operation of a high school for Negro children. Similarly, in the Gong Lum case, the plaintiff, a child of
Chinese descent, contended only that state authorities had misapplied the doctrine by classifying him with Negro children and requiring him to
attend a Negro school. (Return to opinion)

9. In the Kansas case, the court below found substantial equality as to all such factors. 98 F.Supp. 797, 798. In the South Carolina case, the court

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