<p>Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)'s full name is Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. (hereinafter Brown). </p>
<p>After the Civil War, slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865, and The fourteenth Amendment, added to the Constitution in 1868, contains the Equal Protection Clause, which provides that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law”. However, the equality was denied to African Americans for years, which included discrimination in housing, transportation, education, jobs, service at restaurant, and other activities. </p>
<p>Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case Plessy v. Ferguson. In that case, the Supreme Court held that the “separate but equal” state law of Louisiana, and did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of The Fourteenth Amendment. After this case, the “separate but equal” doctrine was applied to all areas of African American’s life, including public education. Thus, African American and white child attended separate schools, often with unequal facilities. </p>
<p>All of above events is the social background before the Brown case. </p>
<p>In 1951, a class action suit was filed against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas, and the plaintiffs were thirteen Topeka parents on behalf of their 20 children. The reason was the suit called for the school district to reverse its policy of racial segregation; furthermore, The Topeka Board of Education operated separate elementary schools under an 1879 Kansas law, which permitted (but did not require) districts to maintain separate elementary school facilities for black and white students in 12 communities with populations over 15,000. Such an approach sparked the anger of black. However, The District Court ruled in favor of the Board of Education, citing the U.S. Supreme Court precedent set in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S.537 (1896), which had upheld a state law requiring "separate but equal" segregated facilities for blacks and whites in railway cars. The three-judge District Court panel found that segregation in public education has a detrimental effect on black children, but denied relief on the ground that the black and white schools in Topeka were substantially equal with respect to buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of teachers. </p>
<p>After the decision of the United States District Court for the District of Kansas, black people cannot accept this, and then the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed this case. In addition, the case of Brown v. Board of Education as heard before the Supreme Court combined five cases: Brown itself, Briggs v. Elliott (filed in South Carolina), Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (filed in Virginia), Gebhart v. Belton (filed