Plessy, a man who was one-eighth black, but classified as black by Louisiana law, refused to leave in order to trigger a case about the legality of segregation. In 1896, after years of trials ...

On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that denied Plessy's challenge to the law. "The object of the Fourteenth Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two ...