The United States district court in South Carolina ordered equal funding of black schools but refused to mandate racial integration of the schools.
Other similar cases that joined Brown were Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia); Belton v. Gebhart (Delaware); Boiling v. Sharpe (District of Columbia). These cases were consolidated into one case that became known as Brown v. Board of Education, named after the plaintiff in the Kansas case, Oliver Brown. Brown filed the suit against the Topeka Board of Education on behalf of his daughter, Linda Brown. Linda was a black girl attending fifth grade at the public schools in Topeka, Kansas. She was forced to walk a long distance to catch a bus that took her to a school even farther away because she was not allowed to attend a white elementary school that was only a few blocks from her home. .
Local lawyers along with the NAACP lawyers argued that the schools were separate and unequal. This gave blacks a feeling of inferiority and undermined their self esteem (D"Angelo, 2001). NAACP used several tactics to fight theses cases. One very effective tool was the Crisis magazine, developed by Du Bois, which soon became the most important national voice for the advancement of black civil rights through reporting and editorials. It included writings on lynching in the south as well as other struggles with antiblack discrimination. It provided a voice for blacks to be heard.
All five cases that constituted the Brown decision were argued together in December 1952 by Thurgood Marshall. However, the decision did not come that quickly. For two more years the case was argued and reargued. The question before the court was simple: "Was segregated education unconstitutional?" Did segregation really violate the 14th Amendment, which requires that every state give equal protection under the law to all persons, without regard to race? .
Brown v.