# Canonical recap data for Battle of Plessy v. Ferguson Decision (1896)
# Source: https://recap.at/1896/plessy-ferguson
# Format: YAML 1.2 (UTF-8). Generated at request time.
slug: plessy-ferguson
canonicalUrl: "https://recap.at/1896/plessy-ferguson"
title: Battle of Plessy v. Ferguson Decision
subtitle: The Supreme Court's 'separate but equal' ruling codified racial segregation in American law for the next 58 years, profoundly shaping civil rights history.
recapType: global_event
eventStatus: concluded
startDate: 1896-05-18
datePrecision: day
year: 1896
decade: 1890
country:
name: United States
slug: united-states
summaryShort: Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". The decision legitimized the man
summaryLong: Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". The decision legitimized the many "Jim Crow laws" re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877.
lede: On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 that racial segregation was constitutional as long as facilities were theoretically equal. The decision gave legal cover to Jim Crow laws across the South for nearly 60 years until Brown v. Board of Education dismantled it in 1954.
heroImageUrl: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/Portrait_of_Henry_Billings_Brown.jpg/1280px-Portrait_of_Henry_Billings_Brown.jpg"
heroImageCredit: Frances Benjamin Johnston · via Wikipedia
importance: 88
sourceConfidence: 75
keyFacts: []
timeline: []
sources:
- url: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson"
  title: Plessy v. Ferguson
  provider: Wikipedia
related: []
categories:
- election
metaDescription: Supreme Court's 1896 ruling that legalized racial segregation under the 'separate but equal' doctrine.
wikidataQid: Q656660
archiveSnapshots:
- url: "https://web.archive.org/web/20260609210654/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson"
  capturedAt: 2026-06-09
  label: Plessy v. Ferguson
  originalUrl: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson"
taxonomy:
domain: political
eventTypes:
- constitutional_reform
canonicalClasses:
- governance
- transformation
impactRadius: national
velocity: sudden
predictability: scheduled
intentionality: planned
domainCoupling: multi_domain
lifecycleClass: transition
