The Evidence No One Expected

On December 9, 1952, Thurgood Marshall stood before the nine justices of the United States Supreme Court to argue Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. As chief counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Marshall had spent years building a case that would challenge the "separate but equal" doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. But his most compelling evidence didn't come from legal precedent — it came from children.…