Racial segregation in public schools and the controversial
concept of "separate but equal" were unanimously declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court on this
day in history, May 17, 1954.

The high court ruled 9-0 in favor of the plaintiffs in the famous
landmark case of Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, 
Kansas.        

Linda Brown (far left) with parents Leola and Oliver and little sister Terry in front of their house in Kansas. The Browns
sued the Kansas Board of Education when young Linda
wasn’t allowed to go to an unsegregated school.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren oversaw the high court’s 9-0 decision in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case.

Topeka, Kansas is home to the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site.

In Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was
jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white
man, a violation of the city’s racial segregation laws.

The successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by a young
Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., followed Park’s
historic act.  

The Rosa Parks bus at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks
(February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005)

CAMILLE BOHANNON

   
    
  
          ROSS SIMPSON
   

Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio were married on this day in
1954. The marriage only lasted nine months.

  
Under federal troop escort, the Little Rock Nine were escorted back
into Central High School for their first full day of classes. 
 

Under escort from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, nine black
students entered an all-white High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Three
weeks earlier, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had surrounded the
school with National Guard troops to prevent its federal court-ordered
racial integration. After a tense standoff, President Dwight Eisenhower
federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent 1,000 army troops
to Little Rock to enforce the court order.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivering a special broadcast on
the Little Rock situation.