Question

Read the quotation from justice John Marshall Harlan and his Plessy versus Ferguson dissent in 1896.
"our constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens."

The views Harlan expressed in this quotation were...

A. Later adopted by the Supreme Court in the Brown versus Board of Education decision

B. Similar to the views of other justices who ruled against Homer Plessy

C. Immediately adopted by Southern states to justify the end of Jim Crow laws

D. Used to justify the "separate but equal" doctrine and continued segregation.

Answer 1

The correct answer is A.

Brown v. Board of Education was a case that led to the enactment of a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court in 1954.  

The case was about the constitutionality of the "separate but equal" lemma that was accepted in a former decision enacted by the US Supreme Court in 1896 in the Plessy v. Ferguson case. Such decision allowed the proliferation of segregated schools under the belief that, if facilities were equal in quality, such education system was not violating the equality of rights provision that had been guaranteed for all US citizens by the Reconstruction Amendments to the US Constitution.  

Brown v. Board of Education overturned the abovementioned previous Supreme Court decision and declared segregation unconstitutional, claming that, in practice, it actually made black students feel inferior. The court published a deadline and all schools nationwide had to abolish such practice and to adopt racial integration.