The state of Louisiana enacted a law that required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In 1892, Homer Plessy--who was 1/8 black --took a seat in a "whites only" car of a Louisiana train. He refused to move to the car reserved for blacks and was arrested. Established "separate but equal", also know as segregation, as constitutional. After this, Jim Crow Laws, laws that discriminated against African Americans, spread across the US and were heavily enforced in the South