Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Plessy v. Ferguson was an 1896 landmark civil rights U.S. Supreme Court case that resulted in the flourishing of race-based segregation in the United States, both legally and socially, most notably in schooling. Plessy v. Ferguson ended the new citizenship rights granted to African Americans and other non-White groups after the U.S. Civil War. The Supreme Court rulings against the Civil Rights Act of 1875 in Civil Rights Cases (1883) was also part of this termination of citizenship rights. Plessy and the other Supreme Court rulings and legislative action ushered in an age of so-called Jim Crow law—the former practice of African American segregation following slavery—as public facilities could segregate solely on the basis of race under the guise of “separate but equal.” Segregation of ...