Stepped up efforts to change the educational system. In the fall of 1950 members of the Topeka, Kansas, Chapter of National Association for the Advancement of colored people agreed to again challenge the "separate but equal" doctrine governing public education. The NAACP was eager to assist the Brown's, as it had long wanted to challenge segregation in public schools. With Browns complaint, it had "the right plaintiff at the right time." Other black parents joined Brown, and, in 1951, the NAACP requested an injunction that would forbid the segregation of Topeka's public schools.
             Their plan involved enlisting the support of fellow NAACP members and personal friends as plaintiffs in what would be a class action suit filed against the Board of Education of Topeka Public Schools. A group of thirteen parents agreed to participate on behalf of their children (twenty children). "I had to drive my two children right across town, past two all white schools, to an all-black school" quoted Zelma Henderson, one of the other parents who joined in the lawsuit. Each plaintiff was to watch the paper for enrollment and were denied, they were to report back to the NAACP. This would provide the attorneys with the documentation needed to file a law suite against the Topeka School Board. Individuals in the Topeka case moved ahead unaware that at the same time legal counsel for the NAACP headquarters was representing plaintiffs in school cases from Delaware, Virginia, South Carolina and Washington D.C.
             When the Topeka case made its way to the United States Supreme Court it was combined with other lawsuits challenging the school segregation laws of South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first African American to sit on the United States supreme Court, was their lawyer. He successfully argued the combined cases, now officially named as Oliver L. Br...