<P> In its 1896 ruling, Plessy v. Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court established that segregation was legal in the United States, establishing the doctrine, "separate but equal". Homer Adolph Plessy was removed from the East Louisiana Railroad train and arrested for violating the Jim Crow Car Act of 1890 on June 7, 1892 . Despite the Supreme Court ruling against him, Plessy's case marked the first use of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection provision after the Reconstruction Period . </P> <P> In 1935 the United States Supreme Court overturned convictions of the Scottsboro Boys in Norris v. Alabama . These were nine African American teenagers who had been previously denied equal protection under the law as stated in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution because African Americans were purposely excluded from their cases' juries . </P> <P> President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practices Commission with Executive Order 8802, which banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin in the defense industry . </P> <P> In the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, the United States Supreme Court decision overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine implemented in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case in schools and required that schools be integrated . The case was brought before the Court in 1952 after African American Oliver Brown tried to enroll his daughter Linda in a local white elementary school and was refused enrollment . He and other African American parents, with the help of the NAACP sued the Topeka school district, and Thurgood Marshall argued before the Supreme Court in 1952 and 1953 that public school segregation violated the 14th Amendment . The Court decision was unanimous . </P>

Examine the department of justice and its variable historical commitment to civil rights protections