Gibson v. Board of Public Instruction of Dade County

Negro children eligible to attend the public schools of Dade County, Florida, by their parents as next friends, filed a class action alleging irreparable injury and deprivation of their constitutional rights by the Board of Public Instruction and the Superintendent of Public Schools of that County. The complaint averred that each of the children seeks admission to the public schools of the County without racial segregation; that the defendants maintain and supervise such schools "under a system which provides certain schools for the education of white children only and others for the education of colored children only"; that the plaintiffs have petitioned the Board of Public Instruction to abolish racial segregation in the public schools of the County as soon as is practicable in conformity with the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Brown v. Board of Education, 1955, 349 U.S. 294, 75 S. Ct. 753, 99 L. Ed. 1083, but that the Board has refused and, instead adheres to a statement of policy in part as follows: