Rights & liberties
Jim Crow laws
State and local laws enforcing racial segregation from the end of Reconstruction into the 1960s, upheld for decades under the separate but equal doctrine.
In full
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) blessed segregation as separate but equal; Brown v. Board of Education (1954) rejected that in public education, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 dismantled the rest by statute. The period is the standard example of laws that were formally neutral, consistently enforced, and designed to produce an unequal result.
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A plain-language explanation for civic education, not legal advice. When in doubt, the official source named above controls.