Clarendon county in South Carolina was home to 32,000 people, of which over 70% were Black. White people owned over 85% of the land. Many white landowners leased land to Black tenant farmers, who mostly grew cotton. Clarendon County refused to fund buses for Black students, which led to there being 61 “colored” schools scattered throughout the area. Each small, wooden school had just one or two classrooms. In comparison, the county’s white children attended one large, brick school which had 30 buses, a cafeteria, and science laboratory. Initially, the Black community only asked for one bus to drive the children who walked up to nine miles to get to school each day. The white officials in charge ignored and dismissed this request, so the community had parents sign a petition demanding school integration. Thurgood Marshall, then a lawyer for the NAACP, filed a lawsuit with the United States District Court at the end of 1950. In May of 1951, the case was brought before a panel of judges. Lawyers argued that segregated schools caused psychological damage and violated the fourteenth amendment's equal protection under the law. Unfortunately, two of the three judges on the panel ruled that there was no issue with separate but equal facilities, and the Black community of Charleston lost the case. The NAACP appealed the ruling and included Briggs v. Elliot as one of the five cases that made up Brown v. Board of Education. [240 words]