Even before the war, the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund had begun challenging school segregation laws. The fund's leading attorney, Thurgood Marshall, first attacked state laws that denied black students admission to graduate programs in state colleges and universities. Marshall had been denied admission to the University of Maryland School of Law because the school did not admit black students. In 1937, in the case of Murray v. Maryland, Marshall forced the University of Maryland to admit qualified black law students. In 1938 Marshall forced the University of Missouri School of Law to do the same. In 1950 the Supreme Court invali dated a Texas law that prevented black students from enrolling at the University of Texas School of Law in a case brought forward by Marshall.

In the aftermath of World War II, the NAACP decided to challenge the laws that segregated...