Brown v. Board of Education, 1954

The NAACP's legal team, led by Thurgood Marshall, spent years attacking 'separate but equal', first in graduate and law schools, then in public schools. Brown v. Board of Education combined five cases from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and Washington, D. C. One case began when students at Moton High School in Virginia, led by sixteen-year-old Barbara Johns, walked out in 1951 to protest their overcrowded school.

On 17 May 1954 the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, ruled unanimously that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal and violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision cited psychological research, including studies by Kenneth and Mamie Clark. Yet the Court's 1955 implementation ruling called only for desegregation 'with all deliberate speed', and many Southern officials responded with 'massive resistance', closing schools rather than integrating them.

Brown was a legal turning point, but it showed that court rulings needed political action to take effect.