This is an IHeart podcast.

This is our American stories, and we love to tell stories about our nation's history.

And as always, all of our stories about history are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,

where you can go to learn all the things that matter in life, all the things that are beautiful in life.

And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you if they're free and terrific online courses.

Go to hillsdale.edu.

And as you know, we like to bring you events that shaped our country and some for the better and some for the worst.

And through it all, there have been people fighting, fighting for the promises made in our Constitution.

Sometimes the battles we've fought have been lost.

Today, Robbie brings us the story of the Plessy v. Ferguson case

and a Supreme Court decision that solidified segregation for over 50 years.

It's told by a descendant of Homer Plessy himself, Keith Plessy.

Here's the story.

Separate but equal.

It's a phrase that haunted African Americans for years.

The right to separate individuals, restaurants, businesses, train cars, buses,

based on the color of one's skin,

separate but equal was not a policy left over from the Civil War.

It wasn't until more than 30 years after the Civil War that segregation became the

law of the land.

But not all states fell in at the same time.

And in New Orleans, Louisiana, there was a man named Homer Plessy who would, with help of the country,

...