Caption from poster__

 Brown v. Board of Education

 May 17, 1954

We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of 

 children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though 

 the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, 

 deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational 

 opportunities? We believe that it does."

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. Linda Brown was denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka because she was black. When, combined with several other cases, her suit reached the Supreme Court, that body, in an opinion by recently appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren, broke with long tradition and unanimously overruled the “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, holding for the first time that dejure segregation in the public schools violated the principle of equal protection under the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Responding to legal and sociological arguments presented by NAACP lawyers led by Thurgood Marshall, the court stressed that the “badge of inferiority” stamped on minority children by segregation hindered their full development no matter how “equal” physical facilities might be. After hearing further arguments on implementation, the court declared in 1955 that schools must be desegregated “with all deliberate speed.”