Although Progressivism brought greater efficiency to government, established a more equal playing field for business, and increased the political power of ordinary citizens, the biggest failure of the Progressive Era was its exclusive nature. The Progressive Era coincided with the Jim Crow era, which saw intense segregation and discrimination of African Americans. The legitimacy of laws requiring segregation of blacks was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson. The ruling on Plessy thus allowed segregation which represented the institutionalization of the Jim Crow period. Everyone was supposed to receive the same public services but with separate facilities for each race.
so basically, it failed to solve racism and segregation.
