What were the long-term effects of the Plessy v. Ferguson case? Source:

Homer Plessy, a black man arrested for sitting in a whites-only railroad car in Louisiana, looked to the courts for help. Plessy argued that Jim Crow laws violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In1 896, his case, Plessy vs Ferguson, reached the Supreme Court. The majority of the justices ruled that segregation was constitutional as long as the facilities provided to blacks were equal to those provided to whites. This"separate but equal "doctrine was soon applied to almost every aspect of life in the South and endured well into the 1950s. However, the facilities set apart for African Americans in Southern states were seldom equal to those labeled "whites only."