Plessy Vs. Ferguson

• This court case was decided in the United States Supreme Court in 1896. The background to the case is the segregation of blacks from whites on intrastate railroad systems in Louisiana. The Louisiana train system provided separate but equal accommodations for black and white passengers. In 1892, the Citizens' Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law staged the arrest of Homer Plessy to challenge the legality of segregation laws. The case was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was deemed constitutional, and opened segregation to other states.
  
  

Public Areas

• Segregation in public areas included separate eating areas in restaurants, separate lunch counters in cafeterias, even separate entryways to buildings. According to Plessy vs. Ferguson, separate accommodations had to be equal, but the black accommodations were often in worse conditions than white counterparts. Movie theaters hosted separate seating and theaters, housing was segregated to place blacks in a different section of town, and New Orleans even segregated the red light district to separate black and white prostitutes.
  
  

Public Utilities and Buses

• Public utilities such as drinking fountains were segregated. Phone booths were separated and labeled with signs reading, "White Only" or "Negro Public Telephone." Seats in public buses were segregated with the black section being placed as close to the back as possible. Some states required blacks to give up their seats to whites despite the age or physical condition of the black individual. A healthy white citizen was allowed to sit in a seat and force an elderly disabled black individual to stand for the duration of the bus trip.
  
  

Schools

• Schools were built to segregate black students from white students. In many towns, the white students were the recipients of the new schools while black students attended older schools in disrepair. Black students received second-hand school material, and in Kentucky, a textbook used by a black student could not be reused by a white student. States and towns barely upheld the separate but equal clause in Plessy vs. Ferguson by supporting and supplying white schools before black schools, and using the leftover or old product from the white school to supply the black school.
  
  

Sports

• Segregation in sports led to Negro League baseball. Blacks were banned from professional sports with separate racetracks in Arkansas and segregated boxing matches in Texas. The Negro League began in the 1880s with independent black teams and became an official league in 1890 when the International League excluded blacks from their ranks. All sports faced segregation of blacks from whites with the black baseball league being a large answer to the forced separation.