In the pivotal case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially separate facilities, if equal, did not violate the Constitution. Segregation, the Court said, was not discrimination. It wasn’t until May 17, 1954, that the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The Court ruled that “separate is not equal,” and that segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.