The Brown v Board of Education decision ended public school segregation on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says that all citizens deserve equal protection under the law. Adopted on July 9, 1968, the Fourteenth Amendment (or Amendment XIV), sought to strengthen the legal rights of newly freed slaves by stipulating that the state shall not deprive anyone of the equal protection of the law. It was proposed in response to slavery issues during the American Civil War.
