Separate but Equal - Essay Example

Seven judges voted for the judgment against one judge, Justice John Marshal Harlan, and majority judges represented by Justice Henry Billings Brown. It was a controversial judgment that saw the rise of the civil rights movement. These movements agitated for nonviolent means of fighting racial segregation (Herbert 236).

 At one time Martin Luther  King Jr asserted that if the wronged don’t stand up for their rights and speak against the injustice being meted on them, then they were no better than the perpetrators. In 1954, the judgment in Plessy v. Fergusson (1896) was overturned by a decision of seven judges against one in the hallmark case Brown v. Board of Education in case no. 347 US. 483, in 1954.

The judges concluded that studies proved that minority groups of students showed improvement in their studies in a nonracial environment. The courts ordered desegregation in public and private schools. The courts concluded that separate but equal doctrine was overly abused by whites to segregate blacks and provide unequal opportunities to blacks. It was also held that the constitution of the United States of America didn’t allow states to segregate.