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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans.

(Encyclopedia)Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. Linda Brown was denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka because she was black. When, com...

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Board of Education

(Encyclopedia)Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Board of Education, case decided in 1971 by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court held that the constitutional mandate (see Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan...

Plessy v. Ferguson

(Encyclopedia)Plessy v. Ferguson, case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. The court upheld an 1890 Louisiana statute mandating racially segregated but equal railroad carriages, ruling that the equal protect...

Clark, Kenneth Bancroft

(Encyclopedia)Clark, Kenneth Bancroft, 1914–2005, American psychologist and educator, b. Panama Canal Zone, grad. Howard (B.A., 1935) and Columbia (Ph.D., 1940). Clark taught psychology at Howard (1937–38) and ...

Coleman, William Thaddeus, Jr.

(Encyclopedia)Coleman, William Thaddeus, Jr., 1920–2017, African-American lawyer and U.S. cabinet official, b. Philadelphia, grad. Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1941, Harvard Law School, 1946. He clerked for Justice Fra...

Menninger, Karl Augustus

(Encyclopedia)Menninger, Karl Augustus mĕnˈĭngər [key], 1893–1990, and William Claire Menninger, 1899–1966, American psychiatrists, brothers, b. Topeka, Kans. The Menninger Clinic, conceived with the idea o...

Warren, Earl

(Encyclopedia)Warren, Earl, 1891–1974, American public official and 14th chief justice of the United States (1953–69), b. Los Angeles. He graduated from the Univ. of California Law School in 1912. Admitted (191...

Topeka

(Encyclopedia)Topeka təpēˈkə [key], city (1990 pop. 119,883), state capital and seat of Shawnee co., NE Kans., on the Kansas River; inc. 1857. In a rich agricultural region, it is an important shipping point fo...

Marshall, Thurgood

(Encyclopedia)Marshall, Thurgood, 1908–93, U.S. lawyer and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1967–91), b. Baltimore. He received his law degree from Howard Univ. in 1933. In 1936 he joined the legal ...

Jim Crow laws

(Encyclopedia)Jim Crow laws, in U.S. history, statutes enacted by Southern states and municipalities, beginning in the 1880s, that legalized segregation between blacks and whites. The name is believed to be derived...