<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section possibly contains original research . Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations . Statements consisting only of original research should be removed . (March 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> The repeal of such restrictive laws, generally known as Jim Crow laws, was a key focus of the Civil Rights Movement prior to 1954 . In Sweatt v. Painter, the Supreme Court addressed a legal challenge to the doctrine by a student seeking admission to a state - supported law school in Texas . Because Texas did not have a law school for blacks, the lower court delayed the case until Texas could create one . However, the Supreme Court ordered that the student be admitted to the white law school on the grounds that the separate school failed to qualify as being "equal," both because of quantitative differences in facilities and intangible factors, such as its isolation from most of the future lawyers with whom its graduates would interact . The court held that, when considering graduate education, intangibles must be considered as part of "substantive equality ." The same day, the Supreme Court in McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents ruled that Oklahoma segregation laws which required a graduate student working on a Doctor of Education degree to sit in the hallway outside the classroom door did not qualify as' separate but equal .' These cases ended' separate but equal' in graduate and professional education . </P> <P> In Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), attorneys for the NAACP referred to the phrase "equal but separate" used in Plessy v. Ferguson as a custom de jure racial segregation enacted into law . The NAACP, led by the soon - to - be first black Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, was successful in challenging the constitutional viability of the separate but equal doctrine, and the court voted to overturn sixty years of law that had developed under Plessy . The Supreme Court outlawed segregated public education facilities for blacks and whites at the state level . The companion case of Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 outlawed such practices at the Federal level in the District of Columbia . The court held: </P> <P> We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place . Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal . Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment . </P>

Who led the team that challenged the separate but equal ruling