Plessy v. Ferguson
Legalized racial segregation
Plessy v.
Ferguson was an 1896 U.S.
Supreme Court decision that upheld racial segregation under the doctrine of "separate but equal." The case arose when Homer Plessy, a man of mixed race, was arrested for sitting in a whites-only railroad car in Louisiana.
The Court ruled that segregated facilities did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, providing constitutional cover for Jim Crow laws across the South.
The decision stood until Brown v.
Board of Education overturned it in 1954.
- separate but equalRacial segregation's constitutional fiction
- NAACPCivil rights advocacy organization
- segregationForced separation by group
- Jim Crow lawsPost-Reconstruction racial separation statutes
- streetcarRail-bound urban trolley
Fourteenth Amendment · dissenting opinion · color blind · racial hierarchy · Reconstruction Era · legal challenge · white supremacy · judicial precedent · disenfranchisement · systemic racism · judicial restraint · Supreme Court · educational inequality · discrimination · judicial activism · constitutional law · injustice · citizenship
- civil rightsequal protection, equal rights, Civil Rights Act, right to life, Voting Rights Act
- court rulingsrulings, divorce decree, judgments, annulment, verdicts
- Jim CrowJim Crow laws, separate but equal, segregation laws, whites only, whites only signs
- school historypublic schooling, school reforms, college history, teacher training, school districts
- school segregationschool segregation, desegregation, school desegregation, school integration, de facto segregation
- Southern HistoryDeep South, Antebellum, Old South, Dixie, Confederate
Plessy v. FergusonBrown v. Board of Education
Landmark desegregation decision
integration · desegregation · equal protection · Loving v. Virginia · racial equality
Plessy v. FergusonBrown v. Board of Education
Landmark desegregation decision
Emancipation Proclamation · March on Washington · civil rights movement · Thurgood Marshall · freedom