Some call the decade "the nifty fifties" and say it is a wonderful, carefree time. After all, there is a singer named Elvis Presley, a white southerner who sings black music with a special talent and energy . Elvis is called the king of rock and roll—and rock and roll will soon shake, rattle, and roll all over the world . There are two new states in the 1950s—Hawaii and Alaska. Jobs are plentiful and many people have money to spend. There are hula hoops , a movie star named Marilyn Monroe, the Salk polio vaccine—and television . In 1950 only ten percent of American homes have TV. Ten years later, ninety percent do! And TV is very democratic—available to rich and poor . It gives us our first national community culture.

In 1953, a new president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who served as head of the Allied armies in Europe in the Second World War, brings the fighting in Korea to an end. Times are good. But not for everybody. Something in America is wrong. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution promises equal protection to all citizens, and equal privileges. But those privileges, for some, are being abused .

To really understand how, we need to go back about fifty years to 1896. In that year a black man named Homer Plessy was arrested for sitting in a whites-only railroad car. Was it legal for the railroads to separate people because of color? The Supreme Court listened to arguments in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. In 1898 Justice Henry Billings Brown, a wealthy man originally from New England, wrote the decision for the majority of the justices: "The Fourteenth Amendment calls for the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social equality, or a commingling of the races ." What he meant was that though the races were equal before the law, local laws could prevent people of different races from mingling. The Supreme Court's decision was that if public facilities were equal they could be separate .

Now let's fast forward back to the 1950s. Because of Plessy v. Ferguson segregation is legal in schools, restaurants, hotels, and public places throughout the southern states. Separate but equal is the law.