Question

Plessy v. Ferguson

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GPT 3.5
Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark United States Supreme Court case decided in 1896. The case involved a Louisiana law that required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. Homer Plessy, who was of mixed race and could easily pass as white, was arrested for refusing to leave a whites-only railway car and was charged with violating the state law.

Plessy challenged the law, arguing that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law. The Supreme Court, however, ruled against Plessy in a 7-1 decision, establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine. This decision upheld segregation laws and paved the way for decades of institutionalized segregation in the United States.

The Plessy v. Ferguson decision was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court in 1954 in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, which declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The Plessy ruling is widely regarded as one of the most notorious decisions in the history of the Supreme Court and is seen as a major setback in the fight for racial equality in the United States.