The decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson is the first to endorse the idea of separate but equal. The U.S. Supreme Court made clear that any hope for equality for the millions of black Americans emancipated during the Civil War would be a dream deferred. The fact of the case goes as follows: Homer Plessy lost his bid to be treated equally with whites in America. Homer was 7/8 white and 1/8 black didn't seem to matter to the majority of the high court. Only one justice, John Marshall Harlan, dissented from this outrageous result. Activists looked for a person who could help to get rid of discriminatory laws against blacks once and for all. Homer seemed the perfect choice since he was nearly white. Plessy planned to travel from New Orleans and bought a train ticket for Louisiana. In June of 1892, blacks were required to sit in a black-only railroad car. Plessy refused to do that. He sat in the whites-only car. He was arrested and thrown into the New Orleans jail.

          The doctrine of separate but equal indicates that racial segregation is constitutional as long as the facilities provided for blacks and whites are roughly equal. Such supported the segregation in public schools and a variety of public facilities like transportation and restaurants. Facilities and services for blacks, however, were often clearly inferior. For sixty years Supreme Court refused to rule the said doctrine unconstitutional on the grounds that civil rights issues were responsibility of the state. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled separate but equal schools unconstitutional through Brown v. Board of Education. (Reference:Plessy v. Ferguson, Judgment, Decided May 18, 1886; Records of the Supreme Court of the United States; Record Group 267; Plessy v. Ferguson, 163, #15248, National Archives)