Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund brought a coordinated attack on segregated public schools across five jurisdictions. In a unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Warren — deliberately short, deliberately unanimous — the Court held that 'separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.' Segregation, the Court reasoned, generates 'a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.' Brown overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and repudiated the constitutional foundation of Jim Crow. Implementation proved contentious: a year later, Brown II ordered desegregation 'with all deliberate speed,' a formulation that permitted massive resistance to drag on for a generation. Nevertheless, Brown catalyzed the civil rights movement, legitimized federal intervention against state-sponsored discrimination, and remains perhaps the most morally influential decision in the Court's history.