Brown v. Board of Educaon, (1954) 347 U.S. 483

Brown v. Board of Educaon, (1954) 347 U.S. 483; the quote:
Today, educaon is perhaps the most important funcon of state and local
governments. Compulsory school aendance laws and the great expenditures
for educaon both demonstrate our recognion of the importance of educaon
to our democrac society. It is required in the performance of our most basic
public responsibilies, even service in the armed forces. It is the very
foundaon of good cizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening
the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and
in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is
doubul that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is
denied the opportunity of an educaon. Such an opportunity, where the state
has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on
equal terms.
Concepons are seeds that are sown into the legal system and develop over
me. Take the concept formulated by Federal District Court Judge Paul
McCormick, who wrote in Mendez v. Westminster:
Spanish-speaking children are retarded in learning English by lack of
exposure to its use because of segregaon, and that commingling of the enre
student body inslls and develops a common cultural atude among the school
children which is imperave for the perpetuaon of American instuons and
ideals.
He also wrote:
(T)he methods of segregaon prevalent in the defendant school districts
foster antagonisms in the children and suggest inferiority among them where
none exists.
Nine years later, in Brown, Chief Jusce Earl Warren wrote:
To separate them (black schoolchildren) from others of similar age and
qualificaons solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to
their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way
unlikely ever to be undone.