Final answer:
The idea of "separate but equal" facilities was initially considered consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment, but this was later overturned.
Step-by-step explanation:
The concept of "separate but equal" facilities was deemed consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment according to the Supreme Court's ruling in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.
The court upheld the doctrine of separate but equal, stating that separate treatment did not imply the inferiority of African Americans.
However, this ruling was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which declared that segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. The court concluded that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.