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In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that segregation was constitutional as long as separate facilities were equal. Since the 1930s, lawyers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had traveled throughout the South, gathering evidence to prove that segregated schools were never equal and that black schools were often desperately underfunded. By ending inequality in schools, they hoped to bring down all segregation in America.
In 1950, having laid a foundation of protests and legal challenges, the NAACP was ready to take its case to the highest court in the land. That year, the NAACP enlisted thirteen black parents in Topeka to serve as plaintiffs in the case they were building. They advised the parents to try to enroll their children in white schools near their homes. That fall, the Reverend Oliver Brown walked his eight-year-old daughter Linda to the Sumner School…
The case, filed as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, went to the Supreme Court, where it was argued by Thurgood Marshall and other attorneys from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. They spoke on behalf of plaintiffs not only in Topeka, Kansas, but also in South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced the court’s unanimous decision: “It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity…is a right which must be available to all on equal terms. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
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