Brown v. Board of Education (1954) In 1951, Oliver Brown tried to enroll his daughter in their neighborhood school in Topeka, Kansas. But because his school district was segregated, and his daughter was Black, the school turned him away. The Brown family, along with 12 other families, felt this was unfair. They filed a lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court overturned their previous judgment in Plessy v. Ferguson by ruling that racially segregated schools were unequal and violated the Constitution’s promise of equal protection. What if the Court had stuck to its precedent?