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common government of all shall not permit the seeds &f
race hate to be planted under this sanction of law."

In 1952, the NAACP attacked the Plessy decision directly in the case of Brown
v. Board of Education of Topeka. This suit challenged segregated school systems
in four states and the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court's opinion was written
by Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was to lead the Court in steadily expanding the
federal protection of civil rights duringthe 1950s and t960s. In fee Brown decision
of 1954, Justice Warren directly attacked the Court's prior reasoning in Plessy vs.
Ferquson. Besi des renouncing the PIessy decision. Warren emphasized the
circumstances of his time in a way that clearly renounces any fidelity t& original

./

intent or to past social customs. Warren observed that segregation itself announces
to black schoolchildren that they are inferior — and deprives them of an equal
education:

This decision triggered an enormous outcry when it was issued in 1954.
Opponents demanded impeachment of the justices and called for massive resistance
to the Court's ruling. Ninety-six members of the U.S. Congress signed a manifesto
describing the opinion as an exercise of naked judicial power.   Prince Edward

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Right, Human Rights and Civit Rights
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