Which U.S. Supreme Court case in 1954 ended school racial segregation?

The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case that ended legally required racial segregation in public schools was Brown v. Board of Education. The Court ruled unanimously on 17 May 1954 that segregated public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The case centered on Linda Brown, a Black child in Topeka, Kansas, who had to travel farther to attend a segregated school instead of the nearby white school. Her family joined a broader legal challenge organized with support from the NAACP, whose attorneys included Thurgood Marshall.

Brown overturned the constitutional foundation of “separate but equal” in public education established by the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that separating children by race in public schools was inherently unequal, even when facilities appeared comparable.

The ruling did not instantly integrate every school. In 1955, Brown II ordered desegregation to proceed with “all deliberate speed,” but many Southern districts resisted for years. The decision remains distinct from Miranda v. Arizona, which concerns police questioning, and Roe v. Wade, which concerned abortion rights.