Thurgood Marshall

A COMPLEX LEGAL CASE

Marshall’s case, entitled Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , was a consolidation of five separate lawsuits. Challenging the legality of their local school boards, black students and their parents had brought suits in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kansas, South Carolina, and Virginia. The case of Virginia’s 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns was typical of the others. Dissatisfied with the only school open to her and other black students—a tar-paper shack lacking proper heat or other facilities—Johns had led 450 class- mates in a strike that climaxed in legal action against the school board of Prince Edward County. The South Carolina case involved gas station attendant Harry Briggs, a navy veteran from Clarendon County. Seeking improved school conditions for his

Four of the five plaintiffs in the cases consolidated under Brown v. Board of

Education : (front, left to right) Linda Brown Smith ( Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas ), Ethel Louise Belton Brown ( Gebhart v. Belton ), (back) Harry Briggs, Jr. ( Briggs v. Elliot ), and Spottswood Bolling Jr. ( Bolling v. Sharpe ). The fifth case was Dorothy E. Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia .

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