While I agree that the Courts decision in Plessy v. Ferguson was wrong in principle, it was constitutionally technically correct imo, since the states have never amended the Constitution to expressly prohibit segregation.
In other words, the 13th Amendment, or another Reconstruction amendment, arguably should have had an express, anti-segregation clause imo.
Sadly, the fact that Reconstruction amendments didn't expressly prohibit segregation didnt stop state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices from politically amending anti-segregation policy to the Constitution from the bench.
As a side note, are patriots aware of talk that the Civil War was arguably a symbolic contest of power between the federal government, represented by the Union States, versus the states, the states represented by the Confederate States, the 10th Amendment slowly politically fading from the Constitution after the Union States won the Civil War?
Corrections, insights welcome.
From the 14th Amendment: "nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Are convinced that the arrangements in the segregated South were "separate but equal", with the emphasis on "equal"? It never appeared that way to me.
Also, there's a bit of a problem with defining just exactly who the second class citizens are. Was Obama a black man or a white man? What do you think of the "one drop rule"?
Yes, the worst effect of the War between the States. But Lincoln was an old Henry Clay Whig, and they were centralizers (and fans of "internal improvement" schemes.)