Thirteen-year-old Marguerite Daisy Carr’s school, Browne Junior High, became one of the most overcrowded public schools in Washington DC. It had been built to house 888 students, but was serving nearly twice that many with 50-58 students in most classes. To solve this issue, the local Board of Education split Browne’s students into morning and afternoon groups. Students received half the instruction time they had gotten, before. Marguerite applied to the white junior high which carried a full-day schedule, but they denied her because she was Black. In response to community pressure to allow Browne’s students to attend the all-white school, the Board re-opened two old, decommissioned white school buildings to provide more segregated space for Black students. These buildings were in disrepair and didn’t even have working bathrooms. Marguerite’s father, James Carr, was the PTA president at Browne. He and Leon Ransom, a former Howard University Law School Dean, helped Marguerite take legal action on behalf of herself and other Black students. The Carrs sued the Superintendent of Schools, Hobart M. Corning. The district court ruled in Corning’s favor, stating that there was no inequality present. The Carrs appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. There, Attorney Charles Hamilton Houston, former NAACP litigation director and former head of Howard University’s law school, accused the Board of failing to provide equal facilities for Black students. He also accused them of promoting fraud by claiming Black children would receive as much education in half a day as white children would in a full day. The appellate court affirmed the lower court's ruling, and the Carrs lost the case. Though this was a disappointing outcome, the loss helped inspire future legal action focused on integrating schools rather than securing separate but equal facilities.