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Brief for Appellants in the Brown Cases
Brown v. Board of Education was a watershed moment for American civil rights law. The Supreme Court of the United States held that Jim Crow laws that segregated public school students on the basis of race were unconstitutional, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Brown explicitly overturned the court's prior decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, where it had held that segregated public facilities were constitutional, provided they were separate but substantially equal. This event was the culmination of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund's campaign against segregation in schools. Despite this landmark decision, desegregation of public schools was often met with delays or outright opposition. |