Plessy v. Ferguson

It began with a railway car, not a school, but its separate but equal doctrine shaped segregated schooling until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

No. The case began in 1892 when Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man, deliberately boarded a whites-only train car in New Orleans, breaking Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890. The Supreme Court ruled against him in 1896, holding that segregation was lawful as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality. Schools were affected anyway, because the separate but equal doctrine legitimized segregation laws. States consistently underfunded black schools, and in 1927 the principles of Plessy were affirmed in Lum v. Rice, which upheld the right of a Mississippi public school for white children to exclude a Chinese American girl. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education ruled that segregation in public education was unconstitutional. Plessy was never explicitly overruled, but it is effectively dead as a precedent.