The correct answer to this question is letter C, Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
The Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) had upheld segregation as constitutional as long as the separate facilities were still equal. That separate but equal rule stayed in place until it was challenged by Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
Oliver Brown, who was an African-American, attempted to enroll his child in a "White school", which was closer to their house. However, this was against the law where he lived in Kansas and he was told she must take a bus to an African American school that was farther away. Brown and 12 other local African-American families filed a class action lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education, alleging that its segregation policy was unconstitutional. The case was ultimately heard by the United States Supreme Court (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954) and in a landmark ruling, the Court unanimously agreed that “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place” because “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
The Court argued that separate educational facilities violated the protections of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Learning Point: The ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) overturned the separate but equal rule established by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
