Three lawyers confer at the Supreme Court, 1953. Gelatin silver print. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (98)

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and its legal offspring, the Legal Defense and Educational Fund, developed a systematic attack against the doctrine of “separate but equal.” The campaign started at the graduate and professional educational levels. The attack culminated in five separate cases gathered together under the name of one of them—Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

Aware of the gravity of the issue and concerned with the possible political and social repercussions, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case argued on three separate occasions in as many years. The Court weighed carefully considerations involving adherence to legal precedent, social-science findings on the negative effects of segregation, and the marked inferiority of the schools that African Americans were forced to attend.

The Supreme Court announced its unanimous decision on May 17, 1954. It held that school segregation violated the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The following year the Court ordered desegregation “with all deliberate speed.”