Civil Rights Blog Post

The fight to overturn Plessy vs. Ferguson took years and immense amounts of effort. It started with Thurgood Marshall fighting the racist Plessy ruling in a battle with the University of Texas Law School. Marshall states that even if the University of Texas built a law school of equal facilities for black students the existing law school would still be inherently better due to several intangible reasons. The fight continued in Federal District Courts in South Carolina, and Virginia. After these district court fights they moved on to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals and then the Supreme Court. Mr. Marshall's main legal argument was that separate but equal facilities are inherently unequal. He said that the stigma of segregation negatively affected black students and that building facilities of equal quality to the white school's would still be illegal under the 14th amendment. The opposition said facilities of equal quality are perfectly equal under the law and do not violate the 14th Amendment.


http://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/get-involved/federal-court-activities/brown-board-education-re-enactment/history.aspx
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_brown.html
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=87
http://www.oyez.org/sites/default/files/justices/thurgood_marshall/thurgood_marshall_portrait_cropped.1.jpg