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CEC was organized in 1922 by a small group of administrators and faculty members at Columbia University. Advocating for children with disabilities, the CEC has grown, becoming a leading voice for special education across the nation.

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The significant court case that overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, ruling that separate was not equal. Not only did this integrate black and white schools but it also integrated special needs students and general population students and brought more attention to the needs of special ed. programs in schools.

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Separate But Equal Doctrine

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and whites were equal.

The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites-known as "Jim Crow" laws -and established the "separate but equal" doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.

But by the early 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) was working hard to challenge segregation laws in public schools, and had filed lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs in states such as South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware.

In the case that would become most famous, a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown, was denied entrance to Topeka's all-white elementary schools.

In his lawsuit, Brown claimed that schools for Black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-called "equal protection clause" of the 14th Amendment, which holds that no state can "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The case went before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, which agreed that public school segregation had a "detrimental effect upon the colored children" and contributed to "a sense of inferiority," but still upheld the "separate but equal" doctrine.

Brown v. Board of Education Verdict

When Brown's case and four other cases related to school segregation first came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court combined them into a single case under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Thurgood Marshall, the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs. (Thirteen years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson would appoint Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice.)

At first, the justices were divided on how to rule on school segregation, with Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson holding the opinion that the Plessy verdict should stand. But in September 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education was to be heard, Vinson died, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced him with Earl Warren, then governor of California.

Displaying considerable political skill and determination, the new chief justice succeeded in engineering a unanimous verdict against school segregation the following year.

In the decision, issued on May 17, 1954, Warren wrote that "in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place," as segregated schools are "inherently unequal." As a result, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs were being "deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."

Little Rock Nine

In its verdict, the Supreme Court did not specify how exactly schools should be integrated, but asked for further arguments about it.

In May 1955, the Court issued a second opinion in the case (known as Brown v. Board of Education II), which remanded future desegregation cases to lower federal courts and directed district courts and school boards to proceed with desegregation "with all deliberate speed."

Though well intentioned, the Court's actions effectively opened the door to local judicial and political evasion of desegregation. While Kansas and some other states acted in accordance with the verdict, many school and local officials in the South defied it.

In one major example, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the state National Guard to prevent Black students from attending high school in Little Rock in 1957. After a tense standoff, President Eisenhower deployed federal troops, and nine students-known as the " Little Rock Nine"- were able to enter Central High School under armed guard.

Impact of Brown v. Board of Education

Though the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board didn't achieve school desegregation on its own, the ruling (and the steadfast resistance to it across the South) fueled the nascent civil rights movement in the United States.

In 1955, a year after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and would lead to other boycotts, sit-ins and demonstrations (many of them led by Martin Luther King Jr.), in a movement that would eventually lead to the toppling of Jim Crow laws across the South.

Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, backed by enforcement by the Justice Department, began the process of desegregation in earnest. This landmark piece of civil rights legislation was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

In 1976, the Supreme Court issued another landmark decision in Runyon v. McCrary, ruling that even private, nonsectarian schools that denied admission to students on the basis of race violated federal civil rights laws.

By overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine, the Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education had set the legal precedent that would be used to overturn laws enforcing segregation in other public facilities. But despite its undoubted impact, the historic verdict fell short of achieving its primary mission of integrating the nation's public schools.

Today, more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, the debate continues over how to combat racial inequalities in the nation's school system, largely based on residential patterns and differences in resources between schools in wealthier and economically disadvantaged districts across the country.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

Sources

History - Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment, United States Courts.
Brown v. Board of Education, The Civil Rights Movement: Volume I (Salem Press).
Cass Sunstein, "Did Brown Matter?" The New Yorker, May 3, 2004.
Brown v. Board of Education, PBS.org.
Richard Rothstein, Brown v. Board at 60, Economic Policy Institute, April 17, 2014.

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Brown v. Board of Education: Summary, Ruling & Impact | HISTORY

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.

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Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965)

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Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965)

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Emphasizing on high standards and accountability, ESEA is a law that funds primary and secondary education. It provided grants to schools and institutions to fund programs that educated students with disabilities.

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Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965

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The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was a cornerstone of President Lyndon B. Johnson's "War on Poverty" (McLaughlin, 1975). This law brought education into the forefront of the national assault on poverty and represented a landmark commitment to equal access to quality education (Jeffrey, 1978).

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In the Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia (1971)

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In the Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia (1971)

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In this ruling, it was decided that "exceptional students" deserved the right to free public education and that the inadequacies of a school system should no longer impact students with disabilities any longer.

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Mills v. Board of Education of District of Columbia

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Section 504 is a part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that prohibits against discrimination of people with a disability. It requires that the needs of students with disabilities are met just the same as the needs of the non-disabled students are met.

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Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975)

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Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975)

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The EHA ensured that handicapped children will receive adequate education and included providing these students with one free meal a day.  Students were also to be set up with individualized learning plans to assist them in receiving their education in the least restrictive environment.

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S. 6 (94th) was a bill in the United States Congress.

A bill must be passed by both the House and Senate in identical form and then be signed by the President to become law.

Bills numbers restart every two years. That means there are other bills with the number S. 6. This is the one from the 94 th Congress.

This bill was introduced in the 94 th Congress, which met from Jan 14, 1975 to Oct 1, 1976. Legislation not enacted by the end of a Congress is cleared from the books.

How to cite this information.

We recommend the following MLA-formatted citation when using the information you see here in academic work:

"S. 6 - 94th Congress: Education For All Handicapped Children Act." www.GovTrack.us. 1975. January 25, 2021 <https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/94/s6>

Where is this information from?

GovTrack automatically collects legislative information from a variety of governmental and non-governmental sources. This page is sourced primarily from Congress.gov, the official portal of the United States Congress. Congress.gov is generally updated one day after events occur, and so legislative activity shown here may be one day behind. Data via the congress project.

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Education For All Handicapped Children Act (1975 - S. 6)

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A bill must be passed by both the House and Senate in identical form and then be signed by the President to become law. Bills numbers restart every two years. That means there are other bills with the number S. 6. This is the one from the 94 th Congress.

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Handicapped Children's Protection Act (1986)

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Handicapped Children's Protection Act (1986)

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The Education for All Handicapped Children Act provides free, appropriate public education for handicapped children, as well as due process procedures. It also gave parents more rights to a say in their child's IEP.

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The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibited discrimination against people with disabilities. Several areas such as job sites, transportation, public accommodations, and government services were included.

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IDEA was a law created to provide services such as FAPE, LRE, IEP, parent and student participation, and safe procedures for participants. From infants to youth aged 21, all are protected under IDEA.

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Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

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The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a law that makes available a free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the nation and ensures special education and related services to those children.

The IDEA governs how states and public agencies provide early intervention, special education, and related services to more than 8 million (as of school year 2022-23) eligible infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities.

Infants and toddlers, birth through age 2, with disabilities and their families receive early intervention services under IDEA Part C. Children and youth ages 3 through 21 receive special education and related services under IDEA Part B.

Additionally, the IDEA authorizes:

Formula grants to states to support special education and related services and early intervention services.

Discretionary grants to state educational agencies, institutions of higher education, and other nonprofit organizations to support research, demonstrations, technical assistance and dissemination, technology development, personnel preparation and development, and parent-training and -information centers.

Congress reauthorized the IDEA in 2004 and most recently amended the IDEA through Public Law 114-95, the Every Student Succeeds Act, in December 2015.

In the law, Congress states:

Disability is a natural part of the human experience and in no way diminishes the right of individuals to participate in or contribute to society. Improving educational results for children with disabilities is an essential element of our national policy of ensuring equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with disabilities.

Other Laws for Children with Disabilities

The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) provides additional resources of interest for individuals with disabilities and their families.

OCR does not enforce the IDEA; however, OCR does enforce the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504 and Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Title II rights of IDEA-eligible students with disabilities.

To learn more, visit the OCR's Frequently Asked Questions About Section 504 and the Education of Children with Disabilities.

Visit OCR's website for additional resources.

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About IDEA - Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

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The IDEA is a law that makes available a free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the nation and ensures special education and related services to those children.

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The No Child Left Behind Act focuses on closing the student achievement gap by requiring students from grades 3-12 to be tested on reading and math and achieve or exceed expectations.