Describe the strategy used by Thurgood Marshall in representing the NAACP during the arguments for Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Include any barriers to success as well as the way in which the NAACP responded to them.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The NAACP, represented by Thurgood Marshall, had a number of specific barriers in front of it with regard to successfully overturning the policy of “separate but equal” facilities as implemented following the case of Plessey v. Ferguson. These included (1) a long-standing history of legally segregated facilities throughout the South; (2) a lack of desire on behalf of the Supreme Court to entangle itself in the arena of segregated facilities for fear of unduly creating new law or policy; and (3) a complete lack of ability on behalf of Congress to involve itself in creating or changing laws that could impact the status quo of separate but equal facilities. The NAACP had two choices. First, it could seek to argue for the overturn of “separate but equal” as national policy, but historically, the Supreme Court, Congress, and the states themselves had consistently upheld “separate but equal” as the law of the land with regard to segregation in public facilities and educational programs. The chances of actually overturning this policy were, at best, slim. The other option would be to argue for the improvement of segregated black educational programs in order to make them equivalent in facilities, opportunities, and performance to those of white schools. The strategy of seeking court intervention with regard to overturning the “separate but equal” policy was risky, but Marshall saw this as the only viable long-term solution to segregated schools and eventually the desegregation of public facilities throughout the South, which was the ultimate objective of the NAACP. Eventually, Marshall would assemble five cases under the umbrella of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 and would choose to argue for the immediate integration of public schools rather than to take the easier route of funding black schools to the same level of white schools but allowing continued segregation. Marshall felt the only viable solution was to argue that separate but equal was inherently unequal and, to the surprise of most, the court unanimously agreed with Marshall and the NAACP, eventually ordering the immediate integration of public schools throughout the nation with “all deliberate speed” (Brown v. Board II, 1955).