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===Origins of the Legal Battle===
Almost immediately, Black activists began to battle for the restoration of their civil rights. In ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06Y3GT6YV/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B06Y3GT6YV&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=e9fcd64d0d025c6fc7db1af301f30e32 Defining the Struggle]'', Susan Carle argues that this began in the 1880s with groups like the Afro-American League, under the leadership of Howard Law School graduate, T. Thomas Fortune, pressuring the state through legal test cases. The strategy was to utilize incidents of racial discrimination as “tests” to bring to the courts to get them to rule on the legality of segregation. In the 1890s, another organization, the Afro-American Council continued this strategy. However, with the ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0700618473/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0700618473&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=9e0b9a052f542b936d11bc2da462ee5d Plessy v. Ferguson]'' decision of 1896, it seemed things would get a bit more difficult.
===Early Twentieth Century Movements===
===School Desegregation===
[[File:houston.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Charles Hamilton Houston]]
The Legal Defense Fund began its work in the 1930s and looked toward desegregating professional schools as a way to confront the environment of Jim Crow. It was believed that opening doors for Blacks in these settings would allow the expansion of Black professionals that would then serve the Black community. In a series of cases, they were able to undo the segregationist policies of law schools in Maryland (''Murray v. Maryland''), Missouri (''State ex rel. Gaines v. Canada''), and eventually Oklahoma (''McLaurin v. Oklahoma'') and Texas (''Sweatt v. Painter'').
All the while, the desegregation of public school resources was on the agenda. Houston passed away in 1950, leaving the work to a group of young attorneys, including eventual Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall. Together, they led the legal strategy that eventuated in the school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education. A collection of five cases of educational discrimination and inequality from around the country, the strategy pivoted on demonstrating that segregation was inherently unequal, which demanded the remedy that there should not be two separate school systems. Their argument won and on May 17, 1954, the Court declared segregation unconstitutional. A year later, the Court demanded, however, that integration could proceed with “all deliberate speed.” This meant that integration would not be immediate.
===Bibliography===
Susan Carle, ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06Y3GT6YV/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B06Y3GT6YV&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=e9fcd64d0d025c6fc7db1af301f30e32 Defining the Struggle: National Organizing for Racial Justice, 1880-1915]
''(New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)
Rawn James, ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1596916060/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1596916060&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=5bb3bfaa0f550a145836b04d6ec5175f Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation]'' (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013) Blair L.M. Kelley, ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080787101X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=080787101X&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=f1a8365b30b8fed4cf348c2cf20e2aa7 Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy V. Ferguson]'' (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010)
