may 18, 1896 - Plessy v. Ferguson

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Plessy v. Ferguson was an important U.S. Supreme Court case about whether racial segregation laws were constitutional. These laws required Black and white citizens to use different public facilities. The court’s decision in the case established the controversial idea of “separate but equal.” According to this idea, laws that required Black and white citizens to use separate public facilities were constitutional as long as the facilities were reasonably equal. (In fact, public facilities for African Americans were inferior to those intended for whites.) The Supreme Court overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1954, with Brown v. Board of Education.

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