Answer:
This refers to the infamous Supreme Court ruling called Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
Explanation:
This ruling upheld racial segregation by the railroad companies and it is considered a big setback on the advances made in giving former slave populations civil rights after the civil war in the United States. This ruling is generally regarded as one of the worst decisions the U.S. Supreme Court has ever made. SCOTUS at that time found that racial segregation policies could be allowed as long as equal quality services were provided to both races. Hence the "separate but equal" idea that shaped public policies towards race in the southern states for decades. It was only with the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education that the Plessy v. Ferguson case was overruled de facto because the court ruled that "separate but equal" was indeed unconstitutional.
