Jim Crow laws, which enforced racial segregation in the American South, began after the end of Reconstruction in 1877. They were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson that established the "separate but equal" doctrine. Jim Crow laws began to disappear starting in the 1950s, notably with the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The full abolition of Jim Crow laws occurred through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed segregation and discriminatory voting practices, effectively ending legal racial segregation and discrimination under Jim Crow laws in the South.
