Linda Carol Brown—who is seven-years-old and lives in Topeka, Kansas—has to walk across railroad tracks and take an old bus to get to school, even though there is a better school five blocks from her house. Linda can't go to that school because she is black, and the schools in Topeka are segregated. In 1951, Linda's father, the Reverend Oliver Brown, goes to court to try to do something about it. Their case becomes known as Brown v. Board of Education, and it goes all the way to the Supreme Court. Thurgood Marshall, the great-grandson of a slave, is the lawyer who reads the opening argument in the case . It is December 9, 1952. He says, "Ever since the Emancipation Proclamation, the Negro has been trying to get the same status as anybody else regardless of race."

Does segregation break the rules of the Constitution? Marshall and the lawyers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People say it does. They read the words of the Fourteenth Amendment— "No state shall abridge the privileges of citizens of the United States, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." That, says Thurgood Marshall, makes the doctrine of "separate but equal" unconstitutional. He says that segregated schools can never be truly equal—separating people makes them feel unequal and inferior. "Like a cancer, segregation destroys the morale of our citizens and disfigures our country throughout the world," he says.

A year passes. It looks as if the court may be split. That would mean no decision in the case, and segregation could legally continue in America. Then President Eisenhower names a new chief justice of the Supreme Court. He is Earl Warren, the former governor of California. Warren is a mild-mannered man who is not expected to be a dynamic chief justice. But some who know him well realize that he has a gift for leadership. Finally, the waiting in the historic case is over. On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Warren reads the court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education : "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. Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprive children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does. We conclude, unanimously, that the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

Did you notice the word "unanimously"? That's a very important word. The new chief justice has convinced the eight other justices that, because of the momentousness of this decision, they should all agree. Plessy v. Ferguson, a case about a railroad car, had made segregation a fact in almost all phases of daily life in the South. Brown v. Board of Education, a case about schoolchildren, will provide a way to end segregation—and not just in the classroom. On its editorial page, the New York Times celebrates the decision: "The highest court in the land, the guardian of our national conscience, has reaffirmed its faith and the underlying American faith in the equality of all men and all children before the law."

But the battle isn't over. Laws have to be enforced, and some people are determined not to enforce this one. Virginia's Prince Edward County closes all its public schools—for five years—rather than integrate them. White children are educated in "private" white academies, funded with public tax dollars. Black children are denied any schooling at all . Across the nation all-white suburbs begin to develop, where white children can be educated separately from blacks. In some places, when black children march into integrated schools, grownups insult them or throw rocks. Brown v. Board of Education may be a new birth of freedom, as the Washington Post calls it, but the baby is having a hard time feeling free.