Civil Rights Cases (1883)
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 affirmed the equality of all persons in the enjoyment of transportation facilities, in hotels and inns, and in theaters and places of public amusement. Though privately owned, these businesses were like public utilities, exercising public functions for the benefit of the public and, thus, subject to public regulation. In five separate cases, a black person was denied the same accommodations as a white person in violation of the 1875 Act.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
The state of Louisiana enacted a law that required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In 1892, Homer Adolph Plessy--who was seven-eighths Caucasian--took a seat in a "whites only" car of a Louisiana train. He refused to move to the car reserved for blacks and was arrested.

Ex parte Yarbrough (1883)
The Enforcement Act of 1870, which targeted the violence caused by the Ku Klux Klan in the post-Civil War South, prohibited the use of violence or intimidation to prevent African-Americans from voting. In 1883, eight Georgia men, including Dilmus, James, Jasper, and Neal Yarbrough, were charged under the Enforcement Act with intimidating Berry Saunders, an African-American, to prevent him from voting in the 1882 congressional election. The eight were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. Following their conviction, the eight men filed petitions for writs of habeas corpus on the ground that Congress had no authority to pass the Enforcement Act.