16 U.S.C. § 410iiii–1 — Findings and purposes

(a) Findings Congress found: (1) in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that its earlier 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which had allowed segregated elementary schools, violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law; (2) in that 1954 case, Oliver Brown and twelve other plaintiffs successfully challenged an 1879 Kansas law modeled on the law from Plessy, after the Topeka, Kansas Board of Education refused to enroll Mr. Brown's daughter, Linda; (3) the Brown case was joined with four other pending school-segregation cases — Briggs v. Elliott (South Carolina), Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia), Gebhart v. Belton (Delaware), and Bolling v. Sharpe (the District of Columbia) — and all were combined into Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka; (4) a 1999 historic resources study of the five combined cases found each one (A) is nationally significant, and (B) adds its own story to the case for educational equity; (5) Sumner Elementary (the all-white school that refused to enroll Linda Brown) and Monroe Elementary (the segregated school she had to attend) have since become National Historic Landmarks; (6) Sumner Elementary is still an active school run by the Topeka Board of Education, while Monroe Elementary closed in 1975, is privately owned, and stands vacant; (7) as to Briggs v. Elliott, (A) Summerton High School in Summerton, South Carolina — the all-white school that refused to admit the plaintiffs — is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is now Clarendon School District 1's administrative offices, and (B) the former Scott's Branch High School, a 1951 "equalization school" built for African-American students in Summerton, is now Clarendon School District 1's Community Resource Center; (8) Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia — the all-Black school where a student-led strike led to Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County — (A) is a National Historic Landmark, and (B) is now the Robert Russa Moton Museum, run by Moton Museum, Inc. and affiliated with Longwood University; (9) as to Belton v. Gebhart, (A) Howard High School in Wilmington, Delaware — the all-Black school the plaintiffs were forced to travel to — is a National Historic Landmark and is now the active Howard High School of Technology, run by the New Castle County Vocational-Technical School District; (B) the all-white Claymont High School, which denied the plaintiffs admission, is now the Claymont Community Center, run by the Brandywine Community Resource Council; and (C) the Hockessin School #107C (Hockessin Colored School) — the all-Black school one plaintiff had to attend with no public transportation provided — is now a community facility run by Friends of Hockessin Colored School #107, Inc.; and (10) John Philip Sousa Junior High School in the District of Columbia — the all-white school that refused to admit the plaintiffs in Bolling v. Sharpe — (A) is a National Historic Landmark, (B) is now called the "John Philip Sousa Middle School," and (C) is owned by the D.C. Department of General Services and run by D.C. Public Schools.

(b) Purposes This subchapter's purposes are (1) to preserve, protect, and interpret, for people now and in the future, the places that materially contributed to the landmark Supreme Court decision that ended segregation in public education; (2) to interpret the essential role of the Brown v. Board of Education case in the civil rights movement; and (3) to help preserve, protect, and interpret related resources in Topeka, Kansas; Summerton, South Carolina; Farmville, Virginia; Wilmington, Claymont, and Hockessin, Delaware; and the District of Columbia, to deepen understanding of the civil rights movement and the context of Brown v. Board of Education.