What was the outcome of the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education?

The outcome of Brown v. Board of Education was significant because it declared school segregation unconstitutional. This landmark Supreme Court decision, delivered in 1954, overturned the precedent set by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which upheld the legality of racial segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine. The Court unanimously ruled that segregating public schools based on race created a sense of inferiority among African American children and was inherently unequal, which violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This ruling paved the way for the civil rights movement and led to the desegregation of schools across the United States, marking a crucial victory in the fight against racial discrimination.

In contrast, the other options do not accurately reflect the outcome of the case. While the case did not address Jim Crow laws directly, its ruling dismantled the legal foundation supporting such laws in education. It was unrelated to issues of voluntary school prayers or affirmative action policies, which pertain to different legal and social issues in American civil rights history.