According to the Supreme Court, was legally mandated school segregation constitutional?
In the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, a case involving challenges to school segregation in Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, and Virginia, the Supreme Court concluded that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and thus unconstitutional. The Court explained: “Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of law; for the policy separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group.” This decision meant that any legally mandated racial segregation in the nation’s public schools violated the Constitution. But the Supreme Court did not order segregated school districts to desegregate their schools immediately. Rather, in 1955, it stated that school districts involved in the Brown case should proceed with “all deliberate speed” to desegregate their schools. Did the Brown v. Board decision require the desegregation
