The US Supreme Court rules school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board
On this day · 17 May 1954
A unanimous Court declared separate schools inherently unequal, overturning "separate but equal" and reshaping American civil rights.
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9–0 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, declaring that state laws establishing separate public schools for Black and white students were unconstitutional. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the opinion.
The decision overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine set in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), holding that segregated facilities were “inherently unequal” under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection clause.
“In the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”
The case was argued by Thurgood Marshall, who in 1967 became the first African American Supreme Court justice. A follow-up ruling in 1955, known as Brown II, ordered desegregation “with all deliberate speed” — a vague phrase that allowed years of resistance, yet the original decision remains a cornerstone of the civil rights movement.
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