The Defenders of Segregation
In defense of segregation, South Carolina gathered a team of lawyers that included the state’s top legal officers, headed by one of the most respected constitutional lawyers in the country. Kansas sent a lone reluctant young assistant attorney general.

Citing Plessy v. Ferguson, the defenders claimed that the equal protection clause of the Constitution did not require integration and that the states had already begun a good faith effort to make their facilities equal. Inequality between the races persisted, they explained, because African Americans still needed time to overcome the effects of slavery.