During the 1930s and 1940s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) devoted much time trying to improve educational opportunities for African-Americans within the existing segregated school system. The teacher salary equalization movement began with a series of successful cases in Maryland. This paper examines how the NAACP used the lessons gained from the Maryland experience to advance the teacher salary equalization movement in Virginia from 1935 to 1941. The role of Thurgood Marshall is also described. By the end of the 1940s, the NAACP realized the impossibility of equal separate schools and decided to attack the entire system of school segregation. However, the teacher salary struggle produced the following gains: (1) teachers gradually received equal pay for equal work; (2) the equity of financial outlay between African-American and White schools was improved; and (3) the NAACP gained procedural knowledge, which aided salary fights in other states. Three tables are included. (LMI)