Final answer:
The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education ruled that 'separate but equal' educational facilities are inherently unequal, contravening the Fourteenth Amendment and setting precedence for desegregation in the United States.
Step-by-step explanation:
In the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, Chief Justice Earl Warren explained the Supreme Court's decision to prohibit 'separate but equal' facilities in public schools, emphasizing that such segregation violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court ruled that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal and that segregation instilled a sense of inferiority among African American children that undermined their educational opportunities. This was underscored by using sociological studies, such as those by Kenneth Clark, that highlighted the detrimental effects of segregation on Black children's sense of self-worth and also argued that qualitatively equal facilities could not compensate for the inequality segregation produced.
The Brown decision overruled the former Plessy v. Ferguson precedent and played a pivotal role in the advancement of the civil rights movement by initiating the desegregation of public schools across the United States. Furthermore, the Court's unanimous decision made clear that the concept of 'separate but equal' had no place in the field of public education, thereby setting a powerful example for the rest of society.