“Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. 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 doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.”
Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing the unanimous opinion of the United States Supreme Court in Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka, 1954
Concerns expressed by Chief Justice Earl Warren were a response to
The establishment of Indian boarding schools by the Bureau for Indian Affairs
The substandard facilities provided in black-only schools under the “separate but equal” mentality
Criticisms of the impact of the Fourteenth Amendment on education in the United States
Plessy vs Ferguson, which had recently ruled that segregated schools were legal
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