By the early 1950s the NAACP was ready to challenge Plessy v. Ferguson head on. Five cases from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia reached the Supreme Court together. Thurgood Marshall argued for the families.
Key idea
In Brown v. Board of Education (1954) the Supreme Court ruled 9 to 0 that segregated public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause, overturning Plessy for schools. Resistance followed, and in 1957 Eisenhower sent troops to protect the Little Rock Nine.
Why it works
A unanimous Court mattered: Warren worked to bring every justice along so the South could not point to a divided ruling. But Brown set no timetable. In 1955 (Brown II) the Court told lower courts to desegregate "with all deliberate speed," words that many districts read as permission to delay. In 1956, 101 Southern members of Congress signed the Southern Manifesto against the decision; Virginia's "massive resistance" closed some schools rather than integrate. In September 1957 Arkansas's governor used the National Guard to block nine Black students from Little Rock's Central High School. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to escort them, and in Cooper v. Aaron (1958) the Court held that states are bound by its rulings.
Work it through
Worked example: Which clause, which case?
A student writes, "Brown overruled Plessy under the First Amendment." Fix the sentence.
- The clause: the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ("nor deny to any person … the equal protection of the laws").
- The scope: Brown rejected "separate but equal" in public education.
- Later cases applied the same principle to buses, parks and other public places.
Answer: Brown held school segregation violates the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
Common mistake
Many students think schools desegregated right after Brown. The Court ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed" (1955), and many districts resisted for more than a decade. Ten years after Brown, only a small share of Black students in the Deep South attended school with white students; real change came after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and court orders in the late 1960s.