Plessy v. Ferguson

The purpose of the U.S. Citizenship status was to grant the freed negros a citizenship that protected them from the actions and laws of the states. The states did not like this, so they sought to segregate their own citizens from the congress created “U.S. Citizenship”, on top of the already high racial tensions. These segregations were the “Jim Crow Laws”. This case brought into question whether the individual states had the right, under the 14th amendment, to separate their citizens from citizens of the United States. The court ruled in favor.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Plessy-v-Ferguson-1896
In 1896: “Plessy v. Ferguson, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 18, 1896, by a seven-to-one majority (one justice did not participate), advanced the controversial “separate but equal” doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws. Plessy v. Ferguson was the first major inquiry into the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s (1868) equal protection clause, which prohibits the states from denying “equal protection of the laws” to any person within their jurisdictions. Although the majority opinion did not contain the phrase “separate but equal,” it gave constitutional sanction to laws designed to achieve racial segregation by means of separate and supposedly equal public facilities and services for African Americans and whites. It served as a controlling judicial precedent until it was overturned by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954).”