We the People: The Brown decision and America's commitment to equality

“If it was not the most important decision in the history of the court,” Justice Stanley Reed observed of Brown v. Board of Education, “it was very close.”

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Brown, delivered on May 17, 1954, held segregation in public schools unconstitutional, a decision that paved the way for the removal of racial discrimination from American law. By any measurement, the ruling place...