In a 7-to-1 vote, the Supreme Court upheld a Louisiana law requiring segregated railway cars, legally establishing the “separate but equal” doctrine that fueled decades of Jim Crow laws across the United States. The case stemmed from an 1892 event in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a train for Black people. Rejecting Mr. Plessy’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated, the Supreme Court ruled a law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between White people and Black people was not unconstitutional. As a result, restrictiveJim Crow legislation and separate public accommodations based on race became commonplace.
By the 1870s, support was waning for the racially egalitarian policies of Reconstruction, a series of laws put in place after the Civil War to protect the rights of African Americans, especially in the South. Many southern whites had resorted to intimidation and violence to keep blacks from voting and restore white supremacy in the region.
Beginning in 1873, a series of Supreme Court decisions limited the scope of Reconstruction-era laws and federal support for the so-called Reconstruction Amendments, particularly the 14th Amendment and 15 Amendment, which gave African Americans the status of citizenship and the protection of the Constitution, including the all-important right to vote.