may 18, 1896 - Plessy v. Ferguson

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Following the Civil War, many Southern states took drastic measures to prevent African Americans from acquiring civil rights and equality. Among these efforts was the instating of segregation, which forced Black and white people to use separate facilities, spaces, and otherwise. Such separation was enforced through the passage of Jim Crow laws, which perpetuated the false notion of “separate but equal” facilities. After shoemaker and civil rights activist Homer Adolph Plessy went against one such law (the Louisiana Separate Car Act), the trial for the violation went all the way to the Supreme Court. There, after much debate, the Supreme Court upheld the states’ rights to enforce segregation laws and the usage of “separate but equal” facilities.

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