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How truly equal is “separate but equal”? How can true equality exist between two people who are racially segregated everywhere they go? Apparently, this was not an issue for the United States Supreme Court when it decided on the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896. The Court ruled in favor of separate areas for blacks and whites as long as they were equal, a decision which would prove to hold for almost 60 years, until being overruled. This was a situation when the United States Supreme Court misused its power to interpret the Constitution in a way to benefit all people of the country. The ruling resulted in a major setback in the struggle for equality between races in the United States and set the stage for racial segregation within the South until the overruling in 1954 (Moser 405). The case of Plessy vs. Ferguson was one of a combination of rulings passed by the U.S. and state Supreme Courts after Reconstruction. Many of these decisions allowed and even required Jim Crow segregation laws in Southern states. They returned to whites the superiority over blacks that the 13th Amendment had taken away from them after the Civil War. Plessy vs. Ferguson was the final step in erasing the policies put in place during Reconstruction. The Reconstruction Era (1867-1877) was an atte mpt by the Union to put back together a war-torn South. Northerners were sent into southern states to set up Reconstruction governments, which were completely in place by 1870. The Reconstruction Era saw many positive changes in the lives of African Americans: for example, the number of black children in school rose from 25,000 in 1860 to 149,581 in 1870 and the number of black voters rose from 0 in 1860 to 700,000 in 1867. However, when Congress withdrew federal troops from the Southern states in 1887, marking the end of Reconstruction, conditions deteriorated quickly for blacks living there (406).While the 15th Amendment in 1870 had legally given blacks the right to vote, grandfather clauses and poll taxes made it almost impossible for them to exercise this right. The Ku Klux Klan was inciting race riots, and starting in 1882 and up until 1968, a total of over 4,700 blacks were lynched. Segregation also took off in many Southern states, as whites searched for this lost feeling of superiority. When blacks went to the courts to try to reclaim equality and justice, they were harshly turned away. In 1878, the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregation on common carriers, such as railway cars and buses, could not be prohibited by state legislatures (Goldman).
Approximate Word count = 1722
Approximate Pages = 6.9
(250 words per page double spaced)
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