School Segregation and the Supreme Court

Led by the NAACP, African Americans also launched a prolonged assault on school segregation. First the association filed lawsuits against states that excluded blacks from publicly funded law schools and universities. After victories in Missouri and Maryland, the group’s chief lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, convinced the Supreme Court in 1950 to disband the separate law school that Texas had established for blacks and admit them to the University of Texas Law School. At the same time, the Court eliminated separate facilities for black students at the University of Oklahoma graduate school and ruled against segregation in interstate rail transportation.

Before African Americans could attend college, they had to obtain a first-class education in public schools. All-black schools typically lacked the resources provided to white schools, and the NAACP understood that southern officials would never live up to the “separate but equal doctrine” asserted in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). African Americans sought to integrate schools not because they wanted their children to sit next to white students and adopt their ways, but because they believed that integration offered the best and quickest way to secure quality education.

On May 17, 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court overturned Plessy. In a unanimous decision read by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court concluded that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” This ruling undercut the legal foundation for segregation and officially placed the law on the side of those who sought racial equality. Nevertheless, the ruling did not end the controversy; in fact, it led to more battles over segregation. In 1955 the Court issued a follow-up opinion calling for implementation with “all deliberate speed.” But it left enforcement of Brown to federal district courts in the South, which consisted mainly of white southerners who espoused segregationist views. As a result, southern officials emphasized “deliberate” rather than “speed” and slowed the implementation of the Brown decision.