Answer:
The correct answer is A. The Supreme Court cases that directly relate to the phrase "separate but equal" are Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education.
Explanation:
"Separate but equal" was a legal doctrine in the constitutional law of the United States that justified and allowed racial segregation, deeming it to be in line with the guidelines laid down by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed equal protection of rights for all citizens, and all other federal civil rights laws. According to this thought, which has become almost a motto in the South, the government was authorized to provide different services for whites and African Americans.
The radicalization of this doctrine was confirmed by the outcome of the ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, from 1896, which supported the segregation operated by individual states. Although slavery had been abolished in all states already at the behest of Abraham Lincoln, after the Civil War many states preferred to increasingly distance themselves from the central government and, especially in the South, this resulted in ad hoc laws which legalized discrimination.
It was only in 1954, with the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which the Supreme Court established that no more distinctions in schools and in the quality of teaching could be made. It was the first blow against the "separated but equal" doctrine. However, overcoming this phase was a long process in the United States, which began in the 1950s and continued throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, helped by various court cases.
