may 18, 1896 - Plessy v. Ferguson
Description:
Plessy v. Ferguson, was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court issued in 1896.
It upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality - a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal".
This legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877).
While it had never been explicitly overruled, a series of subsequent decisions beginning with the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education - which held that Plessy's "separate but equal" doctrine is unconstitutional in the context of schools and educational facilities - have severely weakened it to the point that it is usually considered to have been de facto overruled.
Added to timeline:
U.S. Civil Rights Movement
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