Unable to reach consensus after initial arguments, the Supreme Court ordered re-argument focused on whether the framers of the 14th Amendment intended it to prohibit school segregation. Thurgood Marshall led the NAACP's legal team. The case, consolidating challenges from five jurisdictions, would culminate a year later in the landmark unanimous ruling declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court had first heard arguments in December 1952 but found itself divided, with Chief Justice Fred Vinson reportedly reluctant to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson's 'separate but equal' doctrine. The Court took the unusual step of asking lawyers on both sides to return and address specific historical questions about the 14th Amendment's original intent.
Thurgood Marshall, then chief counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, argued alongside a team that had spent months in libraries poring over Reconstruction-era congressional debates, seeking evidence that the amendment's framers meant to outlaw segregated schooling. The segregationist side, led by John W. Davis, a formidable former solicitor general, argued that history offered no such clear intent.
Vinson's sudden death in September 1953 reshuffled the Court's dynamics; his successor, Earl Warren, would prove pivotal in building the unanimous consensus that produced the historic 1954 decision. Marshall later called Vinson's death, however grim it felt to say aloud, a turning point that helped make unanimity possible.
Key people: Thurgood Marshall, Earl Warren