In 1953, while the Supreme Court was considering the school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, who opposed overturning the Court’s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal” doctrine, died of a heart attack. Quipped Justice Felix Frankfurter, this was the first evidence he had seen to prove the existence of God.
Brown v. Board of Education is probably the one Supreme Court decision that virtually every school child knows. But as recent scholarship has demonstrated, the case’ legacy is far more complex than that summed up in the title of book Simple Justice, Richard Kluger’s classic National Book Award winning 1975 account of the decision and its aftermath.
