An Appraisal of Brown V. Board of Education, Topeka KS. (1954) and the Montgomery Bus Boycott‪.‬

On May 17, 1954 the United States Supreme Court arrived at a decision that had immediate repercussions on the lives of two groups of American citizens who from the early days of the republic were characterized, polarized and then segregated by their physical, cultural and religious differences. Historic experiences have continually characterized these groups into distinct racial and social entities; one free the other slave, one a master class the other a social pariah, one privileged the other deprived, one white the others black, brown, red or yellow. Both groups however learned to formulate specific presumptions about the value of law and justice in relationship to their assigned place in society. Though these assumptions dramatically hindered both political and social advances by ostensible minority groups, e.g., people of African descent, an amended version of the American Constitution eventually asserted; "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws ..." (National Constitutional Center, 2001, pp. 25-26). In spite of this implied intent, by 1896, the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of 'separate but equal' swept away the 14th Amendment's intended application to make primarily African Americans equal under the law. In an oblique reference concerning the disenfranchised, the 19th century French writer and philosopher, Anatole France commented, "the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread" (Kerr, 1975, [inside cover]). In sardonic fashion he undoubtedly was inquiring: if in a dramatic downturn of an economy, a rich and poor man found themselves sleeping under a bridge at night, would they be equal?