The legal doctrine of “separate but equal” allowed racial segregation in the US from 1877 to 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal. The 14th Amendment prohibits denying equal protection of the laws, but the federal government left segregation to individual states. The Morrill Act of 1890 allowed federal funding for separate but equal colleges for black students. Louisiana enforced segregation in all public accommodations, leading to the Plessy v Ferguson case in 1896, which upheld state-required segregation. The situation worsened for blacks until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 repealed Jim Crow laws.
“Separate but equal” was a legal doctrine that dominated race relations, and as they were viewed by the judicial system in the United States, from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until the famous Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case overturned in 1954 The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution provides, as applicable, that no state shall deny the “equal protection of the laws” to any person within its jurisdiction. After Reconstruction, Southern states adopted strict racial segregation policies in public facilities such as parks and schools, and later in public transportation.
The federal government has adopted a policy of leaving the application of the 14th amendment and the issue of segregation to individual states. In 1890, Congress explicitly passed segregation in the Morrill Act of 1890, which covered federal funding for land-grant colleges established by the Morrill Act of 1862. The 1890 legislation denied funding to states that racially excluded students, but it did provide that funding would be permitted if separate but equal colleges were established for “colored” students and the federal funds received were “fairly” divided between the two. The 17 states that had excluded black students promptly built “separate but equal” colleges for those students; most survive to this day and are collectively called “historically black colleges and universities.”
The practice in some states has evolved from simply allowing segregation to requiring it. Louisiana, for example, has enforced a standard of segregation in all places of public accommodation. In 1892, when Homer Plessy boarded a “whites-only” railroad car in New Orleans and later refused to ride in a “colored” car, he was arrested. The case Plessy v Ferguson reached the US Supreme Court, which ruled in 1896 that state-required segregation of races was protected by the US Constitution as long as separate but equal facilities were provided.
Many states responded by enacting a series of progressively more oppressive segregation laws, effectively eliminating the legislative protections offered to former slaves during Reconstruction. Separate facilities were provided, but those provided for whites were demonstrably superior to those provided for non-whites. This situation continued to worsen for blacks throughout the first half of the 20th century.
The 1954 Brown v Board of Education case challenged the principle of “separate but equal,” and the plaintiffs went to great lengths to demonstrate what the court finally stated in its unanimous decision overturning Plessy: “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Brown’s immediate effect was to begin the dismantling of segregated school systems in the states where they existed. It would be ten years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 effectively repealed the Jim Crow laws of racial segregation and oppression that characterized much of the American South from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.
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