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The Supreme Court held that Blacks, enslaved or free, could not be citizens of the United States.
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laws passed by southern governments
Public schools were segregated, and Blacks were barred from serving on juries, and testifying against Whites.
1865 Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands Significance: 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. -
Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
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The Civil Rights Act of 1866 guaranteed Blacks basic economic rights to contract, sue, and own property.
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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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The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
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Pro-segregation states would come to justify their policies based on the notion that segregation in their public school systems was a state’s rights issue.
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In March, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, prohibiting discrimination in inns, theaters, and other places of public accommodation. It was the last Federal civil rights act passed until 1957. Florida was the first state to enact a statute requiring segregation in places of public accommodation. Eight other states followed Florida's lead by 1.
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Charles Houston is born in Washington D.C, September 3 1895
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Plessy v. Ferguson established the “separate but equal” doctrine that would become the constitutional basis for segregation.
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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 the 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.
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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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The Supreme Court held that Texas failed to provide separate but equal education, prefiguring the future opinion in Brown that "separate but equal is inherently unequal."
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Charles Houston dies at the age of 55, on April 22, 1950
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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.
