Answer:
The correct response is Option D: Interpretations of whether the equal protection clause allows segregation.
Explanation:
The 14th Amendment contains what is called the equal protection clause that states that all citizens are entitled to the same protections by the constitution. Race should not be a factor.
Unfortunately, there is a particular Supreme Court case called the Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) ruling, where the Supreme Court justices allowed for segregation. The justices reasoned at the time that "separate but equal" facilities were not a violation of the equal protection clause. This paved the way for decades of restrictive local bylaws and state-level policies that created different public environments for black and white citizens, for example, the Jim Crow laws in the Southern States. The justices in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case reasoned that if the facilities were the same then there was no violation of the equal protection clause.
It wasn't until the Brown vs. Board of Education case (1954) that this decision was systematically reversed by the Supreme Court. In this case, the justices did rule that segregation is inherently unequal and a violation of the 14th amendment. In the early 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was taking up cases that could challenge the segregation laws. The NAACP pursued a number of cases regarding the segregation in public schools. They helped plaintiffs by filing lawsuits in states such as South Carolina and Virginia trying to draw legal attention to this issue.
