<P> The constitutionality of Jim Crow laws was upheld in the Supreme Court 's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson ( 1896 ) , which ruled that separate facilities for blacks and whites were permissible provided that the facilities were of equal quality . The fact that separate facilities for blacks and other minorities were chronically underfunded and of lesser quality was not successfully challenged in court for decades . This decision was subsequently overturned in 1954 , when the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education ended de jure segregation in the United States . In the decade following Brown , the South resisted enforcement of the Court 's decision . States and school districts did little to reduce segregation , and schools remained almost completely segregated until 1968 , after Congressional passage of civil rights legislation . Desegregation efforts reached their peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s , a period in which the South transitioned from complete segregation to being the nation 's most integrated region . </P>
the achievement of the desegregation of schools was primarily attained through
Congressional passage of civil rights legislation