Brown v. Board of Education: Ending the "separate but equal" doctrine

In 1892, a mixed-race shoemaker from New Orleans named Homer Plessy was arrested for riding in a "Whites-only" railcar. Four years later in Plessy v. Ferguson , the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his arrest, and made "separate but equal" the law of the land.

But in reality, nothing was equal. Black Americans were routinely denied access to housing and jobs, and in many parts of the country they were also denied the right to vote and subjected to racial violence.

But in 1909, a group of Black and White reformers came together in New York City to fight back, establishing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People . Among the NAACP's founders were Ida B. Wells – the pioneering journalist who exposed the horrors of lynching – and W.E.B. Du Bois – the Harvard-trained sc