Chap t e r Two

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In the late 1800s state governments throughout the Southpassed legislation known collectively as “Jim Crow” laws. Theselaws separated blacks from whites in most areas of public life.Jim Crow laws established separate schools for the races, direct-ed that black and white train passengers sit in separate cars, andforced blacks and whites apart in restaurants, hotels, and manyother places. To make matters worse, African American schools,hotels, and train cars were typically old, crumbling, and poorlyequipped, while the resources reserved for whites were of muchhigher quality.

Jim Crow laws were clearly unfair, but blacks lacked thepolitical strength to overturn them. Because they could not out-vote the whites who set up the Jim Crow system, their onlyrecourse was to the courts. In 1892 a New Orleans group chal-lenged the legality of one of Louisiana’s Jim Crow laws. Thiscase, known as Plessy v. Ferguson, moved slowly through thelegal system and resulted in a far-reaching and important deci-sion by the U.S. Supreme Court. Just as Scott v. Sandford was thecentral court case for African Americans in the pre–Civil Warera, Plessy v. Ferguson would become the central case for blacksin the late 1800s.

Plessy v. Ferguson

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New AmendmentsIn December 1865, soon after the close of the Civil War, the Unit-ed States adopted the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitu-tion. Direct and to the point, the amendment formally eliminat-ed the institution of slavery in the United States and extended theban to any territories the nation might acquire. “Neither slaverynor involuntary servitude,” the amendment reads, “. . . shall existwithin the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdic-tion.”21

The Thirteenth Amendment, however, only changed the law;it did not change attitudes. Before the Civil War, nearly all whiteAmericans had believed that blacks were inferior to them. Thisbelief was especially widespread in the South, where white lead-ers and writers had justified slavery in part by describing blacks

The Struggle for Equal i ty : Landmark Court Cases

Jim Crow laws separated blacks and whites in most areas of publiclife, including railway stations like the one pictured here in Jackson,Mississippi, which had a waiting room for whites only.

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