Brown v Board of Education was a landmark case that had a monumental influence on the American education system. Although Brown v. Board of Education helped pave the way for the civil rights movement by launching and attempting to desegregate the public school system, its original goal was not entirely achieved. Five cases involving similar issues were appealed to the Supreme Court after all five cases failed in lower courts. The cases include Belton (Bulah) v. Gebhart (Delaware), Brown v. Board of Education (Kansas), Bolling v. Sharp (Washington, DC), Briggs v. Elliot (South Carolina), and Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia). Although these were separate cases, they all focused attention on black elementary school 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 custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayIn 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated establishments were in fact constitutional , to the extent that facilities serving both black and white students were equal. The ruling constitutionally authorizes laws prohibiting black individuals from sharing the same restaurants, buses and other transportation, libraries, schools and other public facilities as white individuals. These laws were known as Jim Crow laws. This implemented the concept of “separate but equal” which would endure 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 working to combat racial segregation in the public school system, at the elementary school level. The NAACP has filed several lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs in states including Virginia, South Carolina and Delaware. Oliver Brown was the parent of a black child who was denied access to a white school in Topeka, Kansas. Brown argued that Topeka's racial segregation was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution because even if the schools were characterized as "separate but equal," they were not and never could be. 'be since they were always separated by race. When Brown took his case to a federal district court, it rejected it, finding that segregated public schools were fundamentally "sufficiently equal" to be considered constitutional. According to the lower district court, "the physical facilities, programs, teachers, and other educational facilities in the two groups of schools were comparable." The court also argued that although black children had to travel longer distances to attend their schools, they received free transportation (a bus) and no services were offered to white students. In 1952, the Supreme Court recognized the cases and decided to hear all five together. The combination of these cases was symbolic because it framed school segregation as a national problem as opposed to a problem that only affects Southern states. The plaintiffs' lead attorney, Thurgood Marshall, who also headed the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund, collected testimony from more than 30 social scientists proclaiming the harmful impact of segregation on individuals.