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Mon, 05.17.1954

Bolling v. Sharpe is Decided

*On this date in 1954, Bolling v. Sharpe was decided. This was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Constitution prohibits segregated public schools in the District of Columbia.

Argued initially on December 10–11, 1952, a year before Brown v. Board of EducationBolling was reargued on December 8–9, 1953, and was unanimously decided on May 17, 1954, the same day as Brown. The Bolling decision was supplemented in 1955 with the second Brown opinion, which ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed."

In Bolling, the Court did not address school desegregation in the context of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which applies only to the states, but rather held that school segregation was unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court observed that the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution lacked an Equal Protection Clause.

The Court held, however, that Equal Protection and Due Process are not mutually exclusive, establishing the reverse incorporation doctrine.  

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Poetry Corner

We gotta put more in our children’s heads than gold teeth, to keep blackness to keep blackness to always keep it from turning around. america’s got all kinds... SURVIVAL MOTION: NOTICE by Melvin E. Brown.
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