What did Brown v. Board of Education accomplish?

Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark Supreme Court case decided in 1954 that fundamentally changed the landscape of American education and civil rights. It is celebrated for overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public schools was inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

This decision meant that any state laws allowing for separate educational facilities for racial minorities were deemed unconstitutional. The ruling highlighted the psychological harm that segregation inflicted on African American children and acknowledged that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, thus mandating the desegregation of schools across the United States. The impact of this ruling extended far beyond education, setting a precedent for the civil rights movement and challenging segregation practices in other areas of public life.