In 1951, a man by the name of Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education after his daughter, Linda Brown, was denied entrance to an all-white elementary school. 

In Brown's lawsuit, he claimed that schools for blacks were separate but not equal. He also claimed that school segregation violated the 14th Amendment. 

The case ended up going before the U.S. District Court in Kansas. They agreed with Brown but they still upheld the "separate but equal" doctine. 

There ended up being four other cases just like Brown's. And when they were presented to the Supreme Court they condensed it into one big case, called "Brown v. Board of Education."