In the 1950's, the idea of separate but (supposedly) equal was still very prominent in the school system. In Topeka, Kansas, a little black girl in third grade had to walk over a mile to the black school every day when a white school was only a short distance away from her home. Her father, Oliver Brown, attempted to enroll her in the white school, but the principal of the school refused, so he went to the area's NAACP head and asked for help. McKinley Burnett was eager to take this chance to challenged segregated schools, and went to court against the Topeka Board of Education. They argued that black schools were often inferior to white schools and thus were not equal, while the Board argued it just prepared black children for the segregation they would face in adulthood.
This case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was combined with other cases challenging school segregation in other states. In 1952 the Court first heard the case but failed to reach a decision, but in 1953 they heard it again and decided that though the school may or may not be technically equal, the inferiority it gave to black students made it unequal, and thus struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine set by Plessy v Ferguson, at least in schools.
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