<Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law according to which racial segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted during the Reconstruction Era, which guaranteed "equal protection" under the law to all citizens . Under the doctrine, as long as the facilities provided to each race were equal, state and local governments could require that services, facilities, public accommodations, housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation be segregated by race, which was already the case throughout the former Confederacy . The phrase was derived from a Louisiana law of 1890, although the law actually used the phrase "equal but separate". </P> <P> The doctrine was confirmed in the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896, which allowed state - sponsored segregation . Though segregation laws existed before that case, the decision emboldened segregation states during the Jim Crow era, which had commenced in 1876 and supplanted the Black Codes, which restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African - Americans during the Reconstruction Era . 18 states had segregation laws . </P> <P> In practice the separate facilities provided to African Americans were rarely equal; usually they were not even close to equal, or they did not exist at all . For example, according to the 1934 - 36 report of the Florida Superintendent of Public Instruction, the value of "white school property" in the state was $70,543,000, while the value of African - American school property was $4,900,000 . The report says that "in a few south Florida counties and in most north Florida counties many Negro schools are housed in churches, shacks, and lodges, and have no toilets, water supply, desks, blackboards, etc . Counties use these schools as a means to get State funds and yet these counties invest little or nothing in them ." High school education for African - Americans was provided in only 28 of Florida's 67 counties . </P>

Which supreme court case established the separate but equal doctrine