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Homer Plessy, a New Orleans man who represented a group of citizens challenging the segregation of public
facilities claimed that it was
unconstitutional and that it violated the rights set forth in the 14th
Amendment. Four
years after its initial hearing in Louisiana, the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson went before the United States Supreme
Court. In a landmark decision handed down on May 17, 1896, the Court upheld the Louisiana statute, thereby making the doctrine
of 'separate but equal' the law of the land for nearly 60 years, until it was overturned in 1954 in Brown
v. Topeka Board of Education.
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