Board First to Rule Against Segregation Since Reconstruction Era. The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. In declaring school segregation as unconstitutional, the Court overturned the longstanding “separate but equal” doctrine established nearly 60 years earlier in Plessy v. …

The social psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark sought to challenge the court’s existing opinion that “separate but equal” public schools were constitutional (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896) by testing whether African-American children were psychologically and emotionally damaged by attending segregated schools.

1940s

In this milestone decision, the Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. It signaled the end of legalized racial segregation in the schools of the United States, overruling the “separate but equal” principle set forth in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs.

The district court ruled in favor of the Board of Education citing the “separate but equal” precedent established by the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson. The Brown case, along with four other similar segregation cases, was appealed to the United States Supreme Court.

Board of Education (1954), the “separate but equal” doctrine was abruptly overturned when a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that segregating children by race in public schools was “inherently unequal” and violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

On May 18, 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson ruled that separate-but-equal facilities were constitutional.

Plessy claimed the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause, which requires that a state must not “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Supreme Court disagreed with Plessy’s argument and instead upheld the Louisiana law.

Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. As a result, restrictive Jim Crow legislation and separate public accommodations based on race became commonplace.

Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guaranteed “equal protection” under the law to all people.

Plessy v. Ferguson

De facto segregation, or segregation “in fact”, is that which exists without sanction of the law. De facto segregation continues today in areas such as residential segregation and school segregation because of both contemporary behavior and the historical legacy of de jure segregation.

This decision was subsequently overturned in 1954, when the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education ended de jure segregation in the United States.

Segregation of students in public schools violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because separate facilities are inherently unequal.