The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, during the congressional Reconstruction era. The amendment’s most significant provision -- “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” -- created the potential for two interpretations. It seemed to some that the civil rights that Congress intended to protect were extremely broad and guaranteed equal rights for all. However, the provision also could be interpreted to guarantee equal protection of political and legal rights but not social rights. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court handed down decisions in a number of cases that would determine the legal meaning of that provision. In each case the court gave a narrow reading to the amendment. Finally, in 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court handed down an interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that would last for nearly a century. The decision declared that the “equal-protection” clause permitted the separation of races in public facilities as long as the facilities were equal because if “ . . . one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them on the same plane.”

Objectives:

1. Students will examine primary documents and factual references to analyze the history of the struggle to end segregation in public education.

2. Students will be able to identify the strategy used by the NAACP to overturn the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.

3. Students will be engaged in historical research and critical analysis.

4. Students will be able to identify how events in the twentieth century affected the campaign to end segregation and be able to analyze the historical context within which the struggle to end segregation took place.