Despite more than a generation of irrefutable evidence of widespread racial discrimination in the aftermath of the Civil War, the court created the mythic “separate but equal” doctrine to confirm racial segregation as the law of the land. The court then followed up with a ruling in Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899) that even ignored Plessy’s separate but equal doctrine by declaring that financial exigency made it perfectly acceptable to shut down black schools while continuing to operate educational facilities for white children.
