Long ago, way back in 1954, there was a Supreme Court case, or a legal interaction in the Supreme Court, held in this very room.

This court case was called Brown vs. Board of Education. It was about a little girl named Linda Brown who wanted to go to a school with her friends but could not because of the color of her skin. Her father decided to do something about her unfair situation, so the case made its way through the court system all the way to the highest court in the nation: the Supreme Court.

Before we can learn about Brown vs. Board of Education, we have to learn about the court case before Brown vs. Board of Education which led to segregation in the United States; this case was called Plessy vs. Ferguson.

Homer Plessy, the man on the left, was a man who was 1/8 black (his great grandfather was black). This legally made him a person of color. Despite this, he bought himself a first class ticket on a train in 1892. The conductor of the train asked him to move to the Jim Crow section of the train car.

Jim Crow was a set of social laws that prevented blacks from interacting, or acting towards or with, whites. The Jim Crow section of the car was only for blacks. This is a picture of what the Jim Crow section probably looked like.

When Plessy refused to sit in the Jim Crow section, he was taken to court and the case was presented to Judge John H. Ferguson. This man decided that Plessy was breaking the law and his rights, or the things the government granted to him, had not been violated. This means that according to the law, nothing bad had happened to Plessy. So, what happened was it was ruled that it was OK for races to be separate if they were given equal opportunities.