In the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that segregation in public schools was a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
A unanimous Court stated that racial separation, no matter how equal the facilities, branded minority children as inferior, thus hindering their development. The separate but equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), one of the first "Jim Crow" laws, was reversed. In 1955 the Court added that schools must desegregate with deliberate speed. The Brown decision gave impetus to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, and hastened the end of segregation in all public facilities.