Plessy Vs Ferguson

NAACP's best legal minds gathered at the New York City offices of the organization's Legal Defense Fund. There Thurgood Marshall coordinated an intense four-month attempt to present the NAACP's argument for school desegregation. Marshall pushed his associates through sixteen-hour days of research as the NAACP's lawyers prepared the legal briefs that would put forth their argument and the courtroom strategy that would attempt to convince the nine justices of the Supreme Court to rule in favor or the NAACP and outlaw segregation in public schools. (57+) Marshall, with the help of his excellent assistants scrutinized previous Supreme Court decisions that might contribute as legal precedents in this case. Somehow, they needed to find a way to controvert the Supreme Court's ruling in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case.

They had to influence the court into believing that the rulings on school desegregation handed down during the first decades of the twentieth century should never govern these recent cases. Marshall and his team would have to present the argument that the most recent school desegregation victories suggest that the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision was losing its legal and moral standing, especially when it dealt with public education (58). Almost a week before the hearing in the Supreme Court, Marshall and his lawyers assembled at Howard University's law school to hold a mock trial. A group of law professors and lawyers acted as the Supreme Court Justices while Marshall and his assistants conducted a dress rehearsal of the case.

The men playing the justices asked difficult questions at the NAACP's lawyers. As a result, Marshall and his legal team gathered together to perfect their arguments and anticipate counterarguments. By December 9, Marshall and his assistants were prepared to present the most important case of their lives before the U.S. Supreme Court (59). Suddenly, as the NAACP attorneys were planning strategies for the argument for the Brown vs. The Board in September of 1953, Chief Justice Fred Vinson suffered a fatal heart attack. The death of this Chief Justice could not have come at a worse time, just as the Supreme Court was deciding the most important case of the century (68). Vinson's replacement was Earl Warren, the popular and well-respected governor of California. Warren had a good reputation for fairness and honesty. Warren was so well respected that both Democrats and Republicans admired him. To Thurgood Marshall, however, the new chief justice caused turmoil. They questions whether the new chief justice would take a radical step to outlaw school segregation and overturn court decisions that had stayed in effect for more than fifty years (68). In order to be ready for the December arguments, Chief Justice Warren reviewed the entire testimony involving the Brown case. He would read the transcripts of the lower-court and Supreme Court hearings, analyze the legal briefs submitted by all parties, and discuss the case at length with his colleagues on the Court