The right answer is It showed that racial segregation was constitutional.
In the 1880s, Tennessee and Mississippi required railroad passengers to occupy the car set aside for their race. When Louisiana followed suit in 1890, dissidents challenged the law in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which the Supreme Court decided in 1896. The test case originated in New Orleans when Homer Plessy, an octoroon, refused to leave a whites-only railroad car when told to do so and was later convicted of violating the law. The Supreme Court ruled in 1896 that states had a right to create laws segregating public places such as schools, hotels, and restaurants. The “separate but equal’’ Principle underlying legal racial segregation, which was upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), came to use in every area of southern life, including streetcars, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, parks, sports stadiums, and places of employment.
