Brown v. Board of Education
In 1951, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) helped the parents file a class action lawsuit. There were five lawsuits in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia about having black students going to legally segregated schools. In 1896, the Supreme Court had ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was legal, as long as separate places for blacks and whites were "separate but equal."  The NAACP's lawyers argued that the white and black schools in Topeka were not "separate but equal."