The Plessy v. Ferguson case was a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1896 that established the "separate but equal" doctrine, which upheld racial segregation laws for public facilities under the Constitution. The case involved a Louisiana law that required separate railway cars for African Americans and whites. Homer Plessy, an African American, refused to leave a whites-only car and was arrested. The Supreme Court ruled that the law was constitutional, and the "separate but equal" doctrine remained in place until it was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1954 in the case of Brown v. Board of Education.
