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The Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and White people were equal.
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Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown, was denied entrance to Topeka’s all-white elementary schools.
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A three-judge panel at the U.S. District Court unanimously held in the Brown v. Board of Education case that "no willful, intentional or substantial discrimination" existed in Topeka’s schools. The U.S. District Court found that the physical facilities in White and Black schools were comparable. U.S Supreme Court was next.
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First round of arguments held in Brown and its companion cases.
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Brown’s case and four other cases related to school segregation first came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court combined them into a single case under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. This grouping was significant because it showed school segregation as a national issue, not just a southern one.
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The Supreme Court ordered that a second round of arguments in Brown v. Board be heard in October.
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Chief Justice Fred Vinson Jr. died unexpectedly of a heart attack on September 8th. President Eisenhower nominated California Governor Earl Warren to replace Vinson as interim Chief on June 30th. The Court rescheduled arguments in Brown for December. Justice Earl Warren would go on to deliver the unanimous ruling in the Brown v. Board case.
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The second round of arguments occurred in Brown v. Board of Education.
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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits the states from denying equal protection of the laws to any person within their jurisdictions. In its verdict, the Supreme Court did not specify how or when exactly schools should be integrated, but asked for further arguments about it.
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Remanded future desegregation cases to lower federal courts and directed district courts and school boards to proceed with desegregation “with all deliberate speed".