The effects of Jim Crow laws were compounded by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 which held that racial segregation did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment.

The Court narrowly interpreted the amendment, effectively formalizing the racist “separate but equal” culture that pervaded the South and border states like Missouri into law, and that led to systematic, gross inequality and violence against African Americans.