Final answer:
Charles H. Houston directed the NAACP's legal strategy towards challenging the legal foundations of discrimination, particularly in higher education, leading to significant cases like Brown v. Board of Education that targeted segregation and paved the way for broader civil rights advancements.
Step-by-step explanation:
In deciding the NAACP's legal strategy, Charles H. Houston focused on the legal foundations of discrimination. Houston, as the vice dean of Howard University's School of Law, led efforts to challenge segregation in higher education. The pivotal litigation strategy involved filing suits against graduate and professional schools that excluded African Americans, exploiting the vulnerability of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that established 'separate but equal' as doctrine. The NAACP's strategy eventually culminated in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, which declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.
The broader implications of this legal strategy included addressing not only the segregation in education but also other interconnected areas of discrimination. Issues such as housing, employment, and environmental factors that disproportionately affected African Americans were aspects of the systemic discrimination the NAACP sought to dismantle. The goal was not just to resolve the immediate legal inequalities but also to challenge and change the overarching social circumstances that reinforced racial segregation and restricted educational attainment and economic opportunities for African Americans.