African Americans have long fought to gain the freedoms deserved by all citizens of the United States. The monumental cases of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) had an undeniable impact on the civil rights of African Americans. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 also played an important role in the civil rights we enjoy in our country today. As televisions were becoming a household item during this period, the effects of media were also notable and widespread. The "Equal Protection Clause" in the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution required states to provide all persons in their jurisdiction with equal protection under the law. and formed the basis for the case Plessy v. Ferguson. The “separate but equal” clause arose from Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 and allowed segregation on intrastate railroads as long as equal accommodations were made available for African Americans and Caucasians. The majority ruled that, although politically equal, African Americans were socially unequal and therefore no amendment was violated in upholding the Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890, the law that Plessy v. Ferguson attempted to find arbitrary. This ruling served as the legal justification for segregation for more than fifty years to come. The only dissenting vote came from Justice John Marshall Harlan, who feared the decision would be as infamous as Dred Scott v. Sandford that slaves were not protected by the Constitution. In his dissent, Judge Harlan argued that the sentence was degrading to African Americans and served as a “badge of servitude.” The decision in Plessy v. Ferguson... halfway through the document... placed since then. The civil rights movement was a long and arduous struggle, but it also saw great strides. It took almost sixty years but Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, finally overturned the decision that served as the basis for segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave African Americans equal opportunity in private enterprise that was finally punishable if not respected, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 forced individual states to abandon tactics that denied African Americans the right to vote. Could all this progress have taken place without the help of the media? Perhaps, but I believe that the progress made between 1955 and 1968 in civil rights for African Americans was largely due to media coverage informing the public of the still numerous injustices in America.