Brown v. Board: Recovering Untold Stories

Recovering Untold Stories: An Enduring Legacy of the Brown v. Board of Education Decision captures the first-person narratives of individuals who were plaintiffs or whose families were represented in the five cases consolidated by the United States Supreme Court in an opinion announced on May 17, 1954.

The court consolidated cases from Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington, D.C., under the single heading of the Kansas case, Oliver L. Brown, et al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka (KS), et al.

We focused on the “et al.,” an abbreviation for the Latin phrase “et alia,” meaning “and others,” because those four letters relegated several hundred brave men, women and children to a legal wasteland, rendering them largely unknown.

This project uncovers and publishes some of their stories to provide a glimpse into the role of ordinary people who found themselves in the center of an extraordinary historic moment.

This initiative was made possible by The Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research, with support from the Hall Center for the Humanities and Walton Family Foundation.