Before the Brown V. Board of Education decision, the NAACP tried to make segregation too expensive by requiring states to spend money on creating Black institutions. The 1896 Plessy v Ferguson decision stated that institutions could be separate but equal. The NAACP tried to use the case against them. A great example is the case of Ada Lois Sipuel, born in my adopted town of Chickasha, OK. When Sipuel went to college she could be denied entrance into white colleges like where I teach, or the University of Oklahoma because there was a Black college she could attend in Oklahoma City, Langston University. Denying her entrance to these schools did not go against Plessy v Ferguson. However, when she applied to OU law school and was denied entrance this did. There was no separate black law school in the state. In 1948 she sued and won in Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla. The ruling basically said the state of Oklahoma had to let her into OU or build a separate Black law school.
Historically Speaking 