case were aware of the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision of 1896. Plessy justified the "separate, but equal" school system between the races. As a result, nothing was overturned or changed. Despite expert testimony that "separate-but-equal" (468) schools were inherently impossible, the court felt compelled to deny Brown and the other plaintiffs. (468)On October 1, 1951 the plaintiffs filed a petition for appeal. Under certain special procedures, they went directly to the U.S. Supreme Court for a trial. The hearing before the court would take three days, and a decision would not be rendered for eighteen months. Among the cases of the twentieth century, Brown vs. The Board of Education would become the most important. (Tackach 57)In the summer or 1952, the NAACP's best legal minds gathered at the New York City offices of the organization's Legal Defense Fund. There Thurgood Marshall coordinated an intense four month attempt to present the NAACP's argumnent for school desegregation. "Marshall pushed his associates through sixteen-hour days of research as the NAACP's lawyers prepared the legal briefs that would put forth thier argument and the courtroom strategy that would attempt to convince the nine justices of the Supreme Court to rule in favor or the NAACP and outlaw segregation in public schools."(57+)Marshall, with the help of his excellent assistants scrutinized previous Supreme Court decisions that might contribute as legal precedents in this case. Somehow, they needed to find a way to controvert the Supreme Court's ruling in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case. They had to influence the court into believing that the rulings on school desegregatoinhanded down during the first decades of the twentieth century should never govern these recent cases. Marshall and his team would have to present the argument that the most recent school desegregaion victories suggest that the Plessy vs. Fuguson decision was losing its legal and moral sta...
