South Carolina Civil Rights Activists And Supreme Court Push To Rename Brown v. Board of Education Case

The landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education may be getting a new name if South Carolina has its way.

Civil rights activists in the state are teaming up to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to rename the case after 70 years, The Post and Courier reports. Their goal is for the court to replace Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, with Briggs v. Elliott, a lesser known, earlier filed case filed out of Clarendon County, South Carolina. The activists hope the name change will cement South Carolina as the birthplace of the movement that led to the desegregation of public schools.

According to the South Carolina Political Collections, Briggs v. Elliott challenged school segregation in Summerton, South Carolina, and was one of five cases combined into the historic ruling. Shortly afterward, the district court issued an official order that ended the school segregation law in that state, deeming it unconstitutional.

While the group expects pushback from both the family of Linda Brown, who was the child at the center of Brown v. Board of Education, and the court, it won’t stop them from pursuing the effort. “Everyone else lays down and says you can’t do this,” civil rights photographer Cecil Williams said. “If this country is going to ever reconcile with its history, this is a good place, upon the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.”

Carolyn Wims-Campbell, a former member of the Kansas State Board of Education, told the Kansas Reflector she was disappointed to hear about the proposal. “I didn’t know anything about that until I saw it on the news,” said Wims-Campbell. “Oh my goodness. I thought, ‘Those people are crazy.’”

Education professionals aren’t sure as to why the Brown v. Board of Education name stuck, but some feel that renaming the case would be a major mistake.

“Changing the name would be a disservice,” said Bob Beatty, a political science professor at Washburn University. “There’s such a rich history to the context of the case and the name behind it.”