The Rhetorical Road to Brown v. Board of Education

As early as 1947, Black parents in rural South Carolina began seeking equal educational opportunities for their children. After two unsuccessful lawsuits, these families directly challenged legally mandated segregation in public schools with a third lawsuit in 1950, which was eventually decided in Brown v. Board of Education . Amidst the Black parents’ resistance, Elizabeth Avery Waring, a twice-divorced northern socialite, and her third husband, federal judge J. Waties Waring, launched a rhetor