The 1896 Plessy v.s Ferguson case was extremely important. It was a legal case in which the Supreme Court decided that "separate but equal" facilities were within the rules as the 14th Amendment.

This means that the court decided that the African Americans and the whites had to be 'equal'. They did this by having different facilities, such as water fountains. They said that the two races were 'separate but equal' which was not the case.