"After World War II] the Court started chipping away at the “separate but equal” doctrine, exposing as it went along the inequality of the practices sheltered by it. Then in 1954, the case of Brown v. Board of Education presented the basic question of whether a segregated public school system with equal physical facilities was constitutionally permissible under that doctrine. The Court held that the separation of the races in the public schools placed a badge of inferiority upon the minority group; that it was a denial of the constitutional right to equal protection of the laws; that the doctrine of separate but equal could have no application, and specifically disapproved Plessy v. Ferguson in that regard. The Court thus opened the door to all phases of civil rights, and in rapid succession applied the same reasoning to other instances of racial discrimination."