In 1954, many U.S. schools were segregated. Black kids could not attend the same schools as white kids. In a landmark case called Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in May 1954 that segregation was wrong. Lawyer Thurgood Marshall argued the case. Years later, he became the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. He appeared on TIME's cover in 1955.
One of the most important changes on the U.S. scene in September 1955, as the nation's children trooped back to school, was the astounding progress of racial desegregation. In Kansas City, Missouri, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Charleston, West Virginia, white and [black] children for the first time sat together in classrooms. --From TIME, September 19, 1955