The NAACP under the legal direction of Charles Hamilton Houston had been chipping away at the legal foundation of segregated education since the 1930s. Beginning in 1950, Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund began mounting multiple cases to challenge segregated public education nationwide. Marshall filed suit in five states: Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. These cases were combined under Brown v. Topeka Board of Education . In 1954, Marshall argued before the Supreme Court that segregation in public schools denied African American students "equal protection" before the law and nurtured the perception that African Americans were inferior. The Court ruled in Marshall's favor, overturning Plessy v. Ferguson and making school segregation illegal. Even though it did not provide guidelines to desegregate public schools, the decision did destroy the constitutional foundation upon which legal segregation in the South rested. A year later the Court issued its second ruling, Brown II, which stated that schools should be desegregated "with all deliberate speed." Segregationists vowed to defy the court and its ruling.

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Thurgood Marshall
Charles Hamilton Houston
Dr. Kenneth Clark
Earl Warren