Dr. James Armstead – Plessy vis a vis Brown

The Supreme Court responded to the legal challenge against state sanctioned involuntary segregation in 1896 with an attempted social compromise using the tortured language of the separate but equal doctrine to support the status quo. This doctrine denied the intent of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and enabled the Jim Crow system of racial separation. Brown challenged this doctrine as an inherently unequal social system and not permissible under our laws of Constitutional protection.