In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education ended with a Supreme Court decision that helped lead to the desegregation of schools throughout America. Before that ruling, African-American children in Topeka, Kansas, were denied access to all-white schools under laws allowing separate but equal facilities, a doctrine given legal standing by the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. In the early 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) brought class action lawsuits against school districts in several states to require them to allow black children to attend white schools. One suit was filed against the board of education in Topeka on behalf of Oliver Brown, whose child had been denied access to white schools in the district. The original case was tried in a district court and lost because the black and white schools were judged sufficiently equal and segregated schooling was therefore protected under Plessy. The case was then heard by the Supreme Court, along with similar cases from around the country, and became known as Brown v. Board of Education. The chief counsel for the plaintiffs was Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first black Justice appointed to the Supreme Court. The lower court had focused on comparing the basic facilities offered in the black and white schools of the Topeka district, but the Supreme Court examined the effects of those environments on students. The Court determined that segregation led to lowered self-esteem and lack of confidence that could affect a child’s ability to learn. It found that separating students by race sent the message to black students that they were inferior to white students and that schools serving each race separately could never be equal. The decision overturned the separate but equal doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson, and the Court ruled under the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law that separate facilities based on race were inherently unequal.