Beginning in the 1930s, the NAACP--under the leadership of African-American attorney Charles Hamilton Houston-- began its assault on the "separate but equal" doctrine announced in Plessy.  Houston chose to concentrate his efforts on segregation in public education, where he thought the adverse effects of the enforced racial separation could be most easily demonstrated.  In 1938, Houston persuaded the Supreme Court that Missouri's refusal to provide legal education for blacks within its own borders (Missouri sent its qualified black law students to neighboring states' schools, paying the tuition) denied blacks the equal protection of the laws.  In subsequent victories in the Court, the NAACP gave teeth to the "equal" part of separate but equal: states would have to ensure that separate educational programs were truly equal in terms of resources, reputation, and other measures. 

Charles Hamilton Houston, the African-American attorney who led the NAACP's attack on racially segregated education.

In 1954, the Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.  "Racially segregated schools," the Court concluded, are "inherently unequal."  The Court found support for its decision in studies that indicated that minority students learn better in racially mixed classrooms.  The next year, in Brown II, the Court announced a decision outlining its plan for implementing racial desegregation in the schools.  The Court took a cautious approach, remanding the cases to district courts with orders to integrate the schools "with all deliberate speed." 

As it turned out, there was a lot more deliberation than speed, and a decade after the Brown decision, only a small percentage of black children in the Deep South attended schools with white children.  Opposition to Brown was intense in some places.  Governors stood in schoolhouse doors and angry whites terrorized blacks. In some places, such as at Little Rock's Central High, integration was only achieved after a powerful show of force by federal troops. 

In one of the school districts involved in the 1954 school desegregation cases, Prince Edward, Virginia, county officials decided to close public schools altogether rather than integrate.  Tuition benefits were provided to children to attend private schools, but the only private schools operating in the county had white-only admission policies.  In 1964, an impatient Supreme Court found Prince Edward's closing of the public schools to violate equal protection, and indicated that federal courts were empowered to order the opening of schools and to order the raising of taxes to pay for them, if necessary.  "The time for mere deliberate speed has run out," the Court said.