Topeka, Kansas, Two Sets of Rights.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1866, guarantees that no state may "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" nor "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." These words give all Americans, regardless of race, equal rights and equal protection under state and federal laws. Yet at the beginning of the 1950s society was still separated into black and white. Hotels, trains, parks, restaurants, apartment houses, and even state voting precincts were segregated by race through state statutes, called "Jim Crow" laws. African-Americans were criminally prosecuted and jailed for attempting to ride the same trains or eat in the same restaurants as whites.

Separate but Equal.

The constitutionality of these state laws was first considered by the Supreme Court in...