Originally posted by gofaster
And the full cite is "Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas". The decision was specifically targeted at public schools, but was interpreted as applying to other public facilities and institutions. It overrode the previous court decision of "separate but equal" paraphrased from "Plessy vs Ferguson". And it took 58 years to do it.
I know the full cite, but I was too lazy to type it all out.
There were actually numerous Supreme Court decisions prior to and after Brown v. Board of Education that really took the teeth out of segregation. I don't remember the citation, but there was a case several years before Brown that eliminated segregation in public higher education.
The New Deal cases are the most fun, though, because you can see the SAME Supreme Court overturn precedents it had upheld just one year earlier.
DejaVu: You're right, it's not about overturning a specific case but rather reversing a legal precedent. So the Court didn't have to rehear Plessy v. Ferguson (which was probably moot anyway since those involved were all dead) itself, but rather it chose to take cases that involved similar legal questions. Plessy v. Ferguson dealt with the legality of separate but equal facilities as did Brown v. Board, though the facts and eras were different in both... as, obviously, were the decisions.
-- Todd/Leviathn
