After slavery ended in 1865, Owensboro's African-American population faced the struggle to find work, establish homes, educate their children, and define their place in the post-war world. In 1880, Owensboro created a system of schools for black children under a Kentucky law that funded those schools with taxes paid by black citizens, but the two schools occupied inadequate buildings and operated only 3 or 4 months each year while white schools had good buildings and a 10-month term. In response, Edward Claybrook, Rev. C. Dabney, Rev. M. Harding, William Hunter, Giles Crump, Charles T. Jackson, Marshall “Chess” McLean, Henry Johnson, Walter Whitenhill, and O.G.K. Barrett formed a committee, raised $250, and filed suit, arguing that the law denied their children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. The Federal District Court agreed and in 1883 declared the Kentucky law unconstitutional. The next year Kentucky abolished the colored school law and replaced it with a new law funding black and white schools from a common fund. Although segregated schools would continue for 75 more years, Claybrook v. Owensboro became an important early step toward equality. In 1892, the legislature passed a law segregating railroad passenger cars, and the next year Rev. W. H. Anderson sued the L&N R.R. after he was thrown off a train for refusing to leave a white-only car. In Anderson v. L&N, the Federal District Court in Owensboro held the Kentucky law unconstitutional, but three years later the Supreme Court overruled that decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, and segregation remained law in Kentucky until the 1960s.
