Thurgood Marshall's legal team needed the Supreme Court to ______.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Thurgood Marshall's legal team needed the Supreme Court to declare that segregation itself is unequal, as they were arguing that the practice of segregating schools based on race violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. This argument directly challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine established by the previous Plessy v. Ferguson case, which upheld segregation as constitutional as long as separate facilities were equal in quality. Overturning Scott v. Sandford (which upheld slavery and denied citizenship to African Americans) would have been unrelated to Marshall's argument for desegregation.

Thurgood Marshall's Legal Team Needed the Supreme Court to ______