Separate Is Not Equal

By repeatedly challenging Jim Crow laws in the courts during the 1940s and 1950s, the NAACP fights the "separate but equal" precedent established by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Lawyer Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP's lead counsel, brings five such cases before the Supreme Court in 1952. The Justices are divided as to whether the court has the power to overrule Plessy and puts the cases — now consolidated — aside for reargument in 1953, asking each side to address specific issues.

Before the case returns to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Frederick Vinson dies and is replaced by Earl Warren. On May 17, 1954, the court hands down one of its most momentous rulings, Brown v. Board of Education. The question, Warren writes in the court opinion, is not whether schools are equalized with regard to books and facilities, but "Does segregation ... deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe it does." Separation "generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may effect their heart and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone." Therefore separate but equal is "inherently unequal," a denial of the equal protection guaranteed to all citizens by the 14th Amendment. Classifying people solely on the basis of race does not pass constitutional muster.

White resistance to the Brown decision is instantaneous and widespread. The federal government is forced to use might to enforce the ruling, and the Civil Rights movement begins in earnest.

People Marching with Signs to Protest Segregation, Houston Texas J.H. Lawson, 1947 Library of Congress