Document B
Plessy v. Ferguson, Quote from Justice Henry Billings Brown's Majority Opinion
"The object of the [Fourteenth] Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute
equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been
intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished
from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to
either."
Think-Pair-Share
A. List three things the author said that you think are important: