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The Supreme Court denied citizenship to Black people, setting the stage for their treatment as second class citizens.
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The first Black schools were set up under the direction of the Freedmen’s Bureau. One of those schools, Howard University, would eventually train and graduate the majority of the legal team that overturned Plessy, including Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall.
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Segregation Begins, public schools were segregated, and Black people were barred from serving on juries, and testifying against White people.
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The intention of this law was to protect all persons in the United States, including Black people, in their civil rights.
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The 14th Amendment overruled Dred Scott v. Sanford. It guaranteed that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside, and that no state shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens, deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person the equal protection of the law.
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Pro-segregation states would come to justify their policies and claim that segregation in their public school systems was a states' rights issue.
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Black people largely disappeared from juries in the South. Florida was the first state to enact a statute requiring segregation in places of public accommodation.
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Established the “separate but equal” doctrine that would become the constitutional basis for segregation. Justice John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenter in Plessy, argued that forced segregation of the races stamped Black people with a badge of inferiority. That same line of argument would become a decisive factor in the Brown v. Board decision.
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The Court’s opinion argued that there was no evidence in the record that the decision was based on racial discrimination and that the distribution of public funds for public education was within the discretion of school authorities.
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The Supreme Court upheld a Kentucky state law forbidding interracial instruction at all schools and colleges in the state.
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The NAACP became the primary tool for the legal attack on segregation, eventually trying the Brown v. Board of Education case.
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The Court applied the "separate but equal" formulation of Plessy v. Ferguson to public schools.
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Houston developed a legal strategy that would eventually lead to victory over segregation in the nation’s schools through the Brown v. Board case. Houston’s rationale for attacking segregated law schools was largely two-pronged. First, the establishment of separate but equal law school facilities for Black and White students would become too costly for the states.
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Thurgood Marshall would eventually be lead counsel in the Brown v. Board of Education case.
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The NAACP defense team attacked the "equal" standard so that the "separate" standard would, in turn, become vulnerable.
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Briggs v. Elliott became one of the cases consolidated by the Supreme Court into Brown v. Board of Education.
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The Supreme Court agreed to hear all five of the school desegregation cases collectively. This grouping was significant because it showed school segregation as a national issue, not just a southern one.
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The Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, and declared that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.