Brown v Board of Education was a landmark case that had a huge influence on the United States education system. Although Brown v Board of Education helped pave the way for the civil rights movement by initiating and attempting to desegregate the public school system, its initial goal was not fully achieved. Five cases involving similar issues were appealed to the Supreme Court after all five cases failed in lower courts. Cases include Belton (Bulah) v. Gebhart (Delaware), Brown v. Board of Education (Kansas), Bolling v. Sharp (Washington, D.C.), Briggs v. Elliot (South Carolina), and Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia). While these were all special cases, they all drew attention to black elementary students, who were subordinate to white students. The Supreme Court incorporated these five cases into the landmark 1945 Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In 1896, during the Plessy v Ferguson case, the Supreme Court decided that structures of racial segregation were in fact constitutional, to the extent that facilities for both black and white students were equal. The ruling constitutionally authorized laws prohibiting black individuals from sharing the same restaurants, buses and other forms of transportation, libraries, schools, and other public facilities with white individuals. These laws were known as Jim Crow laws. This implemented the “separate but equal” concept that would remain for the next 60 years. But in the 1950s, about 50 years later, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, began efforts to challenge racial segregation in the public school system, at the elementary school level. The NAACP has filed several lawsuits in support of the plaintiffs in states including Virginia, South Carolina and Delaware. Oliver Brown was the parent of a black child who was denied entry to a white school in Topeka, Kansas. Brown argued that Topeka's racial segregation was a violation of the constitutional Equal Protection Clause because, although the schools were defined as "separate but equal," they were not and could never be equal since they were still separated by race. When Brown took his case to a federal district court, it rejected it, ruling that segregated public schools were fundamentally “equal enough” to be considered constitutional. According to the lower district court, “the physical facilities, curricula, teachers and other educational facilities in the two groups of schools were comparable.” The court further held that although black children were required to travel longer distances to attend school, they were provided free transportation (a bus) and no services were provided to white students. In 1952, the Supreme Court recognized the cases and decided to hear all five together. The combination of cases was symbolic, as it characterized school segregation as a national issue as opposed to an issue affecting only Southern states. The plaintiffs' lead attorney, Thurgood Marshall, who also headed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, administered testimony from more than 30 social scientists who proclaimed the harmful impact of segregation on black and white individuals. Lawyers for the school boards built their justification based on previous rulings,.