This unit is one of a series that represents specific moments in history from which students focus on the meanings of landmark events. This unit focuses on the black experience in the critical years after Reconstruction. Using the landmark decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the unit opens with an examination of conditions in black America during the post-Reconstruction years. Political opportunities or lack thereof; economic and class status; as well as social interaction will be illustrated through documentary material. In the Plessy case, the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection to mean that "separate but equal" facilities could be provided on the basis of race. By examining the Supreme Court's reasoning in Plessy within the historical context of the period, the student will be able to evaluate the successes and the failures of Reconstruction. By examining the Court's decision itself, students can investigate the nature of judicial review through an example of constitutional interpretation that stands in sharp contrast to the judicial activist character of the Warren Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education nearly 60 years later. This unit challenges students to see the relationship between law and society and how prejudice works. The unit objectives are: students will evaluate the conditions of blacks in the north and south between 1875 and 1900 using documentary and statistical evidence; the successes and failures of Reconstruction for freedmen will be analyzed; students will identify Plessy v. Ferguson as an organized resistance by black leaders to segregation laws in the south; the Supreme Court's reasoning in this decision will be analyzed and; the concept of judicial review and its importance in American Constitutional government will be identified and discussed. Contains three references. (DK)