In the early 1950s the continuing struggle of African Americans for basic human rights was directed toward winning crucial liberties long denied them—a good education and the vote. The NAACP sought to challenge the laws limiting educational opportunities by enlisting the legal strategies of African American attorneys such as the late Wiley Branton, who was to become Dean of the Howard University Law School, and Thurgood Marshall, currently a Chief Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.