President Joe Biden speaks at the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies’ 30th annual gala, Tuesday, May 14, 2024, in Washington. Cheryl Brown Henderson, right, daughter of Brown v. Board of Education named plaintiff Oliver Brown, speaks to reporters outside the White House in Washington, Thursday, May 16, 2024, following a meeting with President Joe Biden to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision.
“I don’t accept the premise that there’s any erosion of Black support” for Biden, said NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who took part in the Oval Office visit. “This election is not about candidate A vs. candidate B. It’s about whether we have a functioning democracy or something less than that.” The Brown decision struck down an 1896 decision that institutionalized racial segregation with so-called “separate but equal” schools for Black and white students, by ruling that such accommodations were anything but equal.