Which event and decision established the legal framework that allowed segregation prior to the Civil Rights Movement?

• A. Brown v. Board of Education
• B. Plessy v. Ferguson
• C. Roe v. Wade
• D. Dred Scott v. Sanford

Answer: (B)

The main idea is that segregation in law was legitimized by the “separate but equal” doctrine from Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. In this decision, the Supreme Court said that racial segregation was permissible as long as the separate facilities were purportedly equal, which in practice never really happened. This ruling provided the legal framework for Jim Crow laws, allowing states to separate Black and white Americans in schools, transit, housing, and other public spaces for decades before the Civil Rights Movement challenged it.

Brown v. Board of Education later overturned the idea that separate facilities could be equal, but it did so by changing the legal ground, not by establishing segregation. Roe v. Wade addresses abortion rights, and Dred Scott v. Sanford, while an important pre-Civil War case about citizenship and slavery, did not establish the modern framework for legalized segregation.