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John, 70 years ago, the Warren court issued one of the most consequential Supreme Court rulings in American history — Brown v. Board of Education.

In a case brought forth by NAACP chief counsel and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the Browns sought to overturn the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that established the “separate but equal” precedent that allowed Jim Crow to take hold across the South.

Oliver and Leola Brown’s 3rd grade daughter Linda had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop. Then, she had to ride the bus another mile to her segregated Topeka, Kansas elementary school, while a white elementary school sat seven blocks from her home. After participating in an NAACP strategy to attempt enrolling their daughter at the nearest segregated school, the Browns and other plaintiffs were rebuffed, and brought their case to the Supreme Court.

The ruling they sought to overturn established more than half a century of repression that included poll taxes, segregation, and racial terror.

Plessy v. Ferguson was one in a long line of ignominious Supreme Court decisions that included the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, which held that the Constitution did not extend citizenship to people of African descent and therefore did not extend them the same rights and privileges as white citizens.

Thurgood Marshall argued that Plessy ’s “separate but equal” doctrine stood in stark violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, and his argument prevailed. The Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education with a unanimous 9-0 ruling.

While this decision was met with massive opposition among segregationists, it breathed new life into the Civil Rights Movement, spurring a string of legislative and judicial victories over the next decade thanks in no small part to the sweat and sacrifice of the Browns and countless more activists for justice and freedom.

Following the events of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama in 1965, a group of volunteer lawyers in New Jersey helped my parents purchase a home in a neighborhood that had previously been racially segregated. The Brown ruling had ripple effects beyond the South. In fact, it helped spur the change in American society that allowed my parents to raise their children in a school district with teachers and coaches who would inspire me to become an All-American football player, Stanford and Yale Law School graduate and Rhodes Scholar, and serve as the mayor of Newark and as New Jersey’s first African American U.S. senator.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the Brown family, to Thurgood Marshall, and countless others. And for a debt that can never be paid back, we must pay it forward.

That is the core mission of my work to build the more just, loving nation that I know we can become. So today, as we honor the courage and sacrifice it required of the Browns to bring our nation a bit closer to upholding the ideals promised in our founding documents, let us recommit ourselves to continuing the movement in their name.

Thanks for reading.

With love and gratitude,

Cory

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