After the war of secession and the abolition of slavery, in the period known as "Reconstruction", a series of laws were passed that prohibited racial discrimination, among them the important Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which established equal rights for all people. However, at the end of the 19th century, the southern states approved a series of segregationist laws that established differentiated public services for whites and afroamercians, included educational centers, that ignored the recently proclaimed racial equality, the decision of the Supreme Court in Plessy vs . Ferguson affects communities in the South because it decided to maintain the constitutionality of racial segregation even in public places by subtly separating African Americans and whites under the "separate but equal" doctrine.
