1896

In Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), the Supreme Court holds that separate but equal facilities for white and black railroad passengers do not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Brown’s majority opinion explains that the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment is not to enforce social equality as compared to political equality or to achieve a “commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.” Justice Harlan is the lone dissenter, arguing that forced segregation of the races stamps blacks with a badge of inferiority.