ABSTRACT

When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States in 2008, many people and organizations were pleased to take partial credit for the advances in civil rights that had led to the first African American president. Outside of the political efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his associates, one man and one institution stand out as the leading fighters who created the legal foundation of civil rights for all Americans. That man is Thurgood Marshall, and that institution is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This is the story, the case of, their greatest victory in the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which became the bedrock of further legal advances in civil rights.