Which landmark Supreme Court decision declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional?

• A. Plessy v. Ferguson
• B. Korematsu v. United States
• C. Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
• D. Dred Scott v. Sandford

Answer: (C)

The main concept this question tests is how the Supreme Court treated racial segregation in public schools and how Brown v. Board of Education changed that legal landscape. In 1954, the Court ruled that segregated public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because separate facilities are inherently unequal. This decision overturned Plessy v. Ferguson’s earlier doctrine of “separate but equal,” which had allowed segregation to continue under the guise of equality. The ruling drew on legal argument and social science evidence about the harm of segregation to Black students, emphasizing that true equality in education requires integration. It also set a plan for desegregation to move forward, albeit with later implementations that faced resistance in various states. The other cases focus on different topics—Korematsu on wartime Japanese American internment and Dred Scott on citizenship and slavery—so they do not address public-school segregation.