Jim Crow laws were laws that enforced the segregation of blacks and whites in the South after the Civil War. Homer Plessy, who refused to obey a Jim Crow law, took his protest to the Supreme Court. The majority found that the law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment as long as the facilities available to both races were roughly equal. After this decision, more Jim Crow laws were passed. Despite the fact that the court said facilities had to be equal for both races, those for African Americans were always inferior to those for whites.
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