The unanimous 1954 Supreme Court decision holding that racially segregated public schools are “inherently unequal” and unconstitutional.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was the culmination of a legal campaign the NAACP had begun in the mid-1930s against segregated education. Under Thurgood Marshall, a graduate of Howard University’s law school, the NAACP’s lawyers moved from demanding that Black schools be made truly equal to attacking segregation itself. The case that reached the Supreme Court bundled five local challenges: Brown from Topeka, Kansas, where thirteen parents had tried to enroll their children in white schools; Briggs v. Elliott from South Carolina; Davis v. County School Board, which grew out of a student strike in Farmville, Virginia; Belton (Bulah) v. Gebhart from Delaware, argued below by Louis Redding; and Bolling v. Sharpe from Washington, D.C.
On 17 May 1954 a unanimous Court, speaking through Chief Justice Earl Warren, held that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” rejecting the doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) in public education. Segregation, the Court wrote, generated among Black children “a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” The NAACP team that prepared the case included Constance Baker Motley, who helped draft the 1950 complaint and later the briefs.
Enforcement was another matter. In a second decision, known as Brown II, on 31 May 1955 the Court ordered desegregation to proceed “with all deliberate speed” — ambiguous language that Southern officials exploited for years of delay and open resistance. The confrontation at Little Rock Central High School in 1957, guided on the ground by Daisy Bates, and Medgar Evers’s rejected application to the University of Mississippi law school showed how far the ruling was from reality. Still, Brown removed the constitutional foundation of legal segregation and gave the civil rights movement its most powerful legal weapon.
See also: Plessy v. Ferguson, Jim Crow, Civil Rights Act of 1964, HBCU (Historically Black College or University), Sit-In
Sources
- National Archives and Records Administration, “Brown v. Board of Education (1954),” Milestone Documents. Link
- National Park Service, Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park, “The Five Cases.” Link
- National Park Service, Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park, “History & Culture.” Link
- Library of Congress, “The Segregation Era (1900–1939),” The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom. Link
Related on Black-History.com
Cite this page
- MLA
- “Brown v. Board of Education.” Black-History.com, 30 Sept. 2026, https://black-history.com/glossary/brown-v-board-of-education/.
- APA
- Black-History.com Editors. (2026, September 30). Brown v. Board of Education. Black-History.com. https://black-history.com/glossary/brown-v-board-of-education/
- Chicago
- Black-History.com Editors. “Brown v. Board of Education.” Black-History.com. September 30, 2026. https://black-history.com/glossary/brown-v-board-of-education/.
By the Black-History.com editors. Last reviewed 30 September 2026. To suggest a primary source or a correction, write to editors@black-history.com or use our corrections form.