Separate Is Not Equal - Brown v. Board of Education

Smithsonian National Museum of American History Behring Center



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Segregated America
The Battleground
Legal Campaign
  • Howard University
  • Charles Hamilton Houston
  • Preparing for Struggle
  • The NAACP
  • NAACP’s Legal Team
  • “Mr. Civil Rights”
  • Targeting Higher Education
  • Power of Precedent
  • Turning Point
Five Communities Change a Nation
The Decision
Legacy

A Turning Point in 1950

To many African Americans, the success of the NAACP’s cases against graduate and professional schools seemed to be a turning point. Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP leaders received hundreds of congratulatory letters and telegrams for their tremendous legal accomplishments. Marshall declared that total elimination of school segregation was the NAACP’s next goal. The association’s lawyers, he said, were now ready to attack the principle of segregation head-on.

Congratulatory telegram 1950

Congratulatory telegram 1950

Telegrams poured in from around the country expressing appreciation and support for the NAACP.
(Lent by NAACP Papers, Library of Congress)
Congratulatory letter, 1950

Congratulatory letter, 1950

(Lent by NAACP Papers, Library of Congress)
“ The complete destruction of all enforced segregation is now in sight. . .We are going to insist on non-segregation in American public education from top to bottom—from law school to kindergarten. ”
—Thurgood Marshall, 1950

1950 NAACP Convention

1950 NAACP Convention

NAACP Convention delegates in Boston, June 20-25, 1950. At this convention, the NAACP decided that it was time to attack legal segregation wherever it persisted.
(Courtesy of Library of Congress)
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