Editing Separate but equal (section)

==Background==

The [[American Civil War]] brought [[History of slavery in the United States|slavery in the United States]] to an end with the ratification of the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]] in 1865.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://railroads.unl.edu/blog/?p=31 |title=How Slavery Ended in the Civil War |author=Williams G. Thomas |publisher=[[University of Nebraska–Lincoln]] |date=June 24, 2008}}</ref> Following the war, the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]] guaranteed equal protection under the law to all people, and Congress established the [[Freedmen's Bureau]] to assist in the integration of former slaves into Southern society. The [[Reconstruction era|Reconstruction Era]] brought new freedoms and laws promoting racial equality to the South. However, after the [[Compromise of 1877]] ended Reconstruction and withdrew federal troops from all Southern states, many former slaveholders and Confederates were elected to office. The Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal protection to all people but Southern states contended that the requirement of equality could be met in a way that kept the races separate. Furthermore, the state and federal courts tended to reject the pleas by African Americans that their Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to federal, not state, citizenship. This rejection is evident in the [[Slaughter-House Cases]] and [[Civil Rights Cases]].

After the end of Reconstruction, the federal government adopted a general policy of leaving racial segregation up to the individual states. One example of this policy was the second Morrill Act ([[Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act#Expansion|Morrill Act of 1890]]). Before the end of the war, the [[Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act]] (Morrill Act of 1862) had provided federal funding for higher education by each state with the details left to the state legislatures.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage |title=A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875 |publisher=[[Library of Congress]] }}</ref> The 1890 Act implicitly accepted the legal concept of "separate but equal" for the 17 states that had institutionalized segregation.

<blockquote>Provided, That no money shall be paid out under this act to any State or Territory for the support and maintenance of a college where a distinction of race or color is made in the admission of students, but the establishment and maintenance of such colleges ''separately'' for white and colored students shall be held to be a compliance with the provisions of this act if the funds received in such State or Territory be ''equitably'' divided as hereinafter set forth.<ref>"[http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agexed/aee501/1890law.html Act of August 30, 1890, ch. 841, 26 Stat. 417, 7 U.S.C. 322 et seq.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090220100345/http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agexed/aee501/1890law.html |date=February 20, 2009 }}" Act of 1890 Providing for the Further Endowment and Support Of Colleges of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.</ref><ref>"[http://fdsys.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-104hr2730ih/pdf/BILLS-104hr2730ih.pdf 104th Congress 1st Session, H. R. 2730]{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes}}" To eliminate segregationist language from the Second Morrill Act.</ref>
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In [[New York (state)|New York]], courts repealed the local "separate but equal" statute in 1938 and the last school for African-American children in New York was shut down in 1944.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Nearly-70-years-after-Brown-decision-New-York-16828901.php|title=Nearly 70 years after Brown decision, New York schools still separate and unequal|publisher=Times Union|author=Rachel Silberstein|language=English|date=20 February 2022|accessdate=2 October 2023}}</ref>