The Supreme Court ruling decision in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 changed the course of education in America, and indeed American society, forever. In its landmark decision, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of African American and European American children in public schools was unconstitutional. The court overturned the previous decision given in the Plessey v. Ferguson case, which allowed states to establish separate public facilities, including separate public schools.

In its ruling, the court opined that separate was inherently unequal and therefore a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. States were ordered to integrate public schools and also to remove laws and statutes that required other segregated public facilities. The case became a beacon of hope for the civil rights movement, which sought to achieve equal opportunities for all, irrespective of race, ethnicity, and gender.

The legal and emotional impact of Brown v. Board of Education cannot be overstated. The NAACP, in which Du Bois had played such a vital role, sponsored the case, as it had other cases around the country. The plaintiff, Oliver Brown, was an African-American man in Kansas whose daughter had to go to a blacks-only school a mile and a half from her home though there was a whites-only school just a few blocks away.

However, Brown was not the only case heard before the Supreme Court: four other cases were bundled into the hearing, which was viewed by the country, and indeed the world, as pivotal (UNESCO, for example, had provided a key paper on the topic). The plaintiffs’ counsel before the court was the storied Thurgood Marshall, later to become a Supreme Court justice himself. Following astute behind-the-scenes manipulation and cajoling by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the justices delivered a surprise unanimous decision outlawing segregation.