The court had affirmed the authority of the southern states to provide separate-but-equal railroad facilities for blacks within state borders. Plessy's most devastating result was its reaffirmation of the belief in the inherent inferiority of blacks. Many schools and other institutions in the northern states that had accepted blacks after the Civil War, subsequently abandoned their private affirmative action programs after the Plessy decision.
Consequently, the impact of Plessy was not limited to street cars; it extended throughout the social fabric for the next 40 years (Motley, 1992, pp. 11-12).
It was not until the 1930s that effective affirmative action policies first began to coalesce. Although many of these policies emerged from congressional legislation as the Roosevelt Administration and Congress enacted the New Deal piece-by-piece, many of the more notable affirmative action policies stemmed from executive orders and administrative actions--both in the period of the New Deal and in more conte
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