15th Amendment Pros And Cons

Reconstruction created a new age of segregation with Black Americans’ political rights being affirmed by the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th constitutional amendments and black codes were passed by local and state lawmaker. The 13th amendment made slavery illegal in the United States, the14th Amendment guaranteed equal representation under the law for all Americans and finally, the 15th Amendment made is legal for Black men to vote. While these were all important steps in the years following the Civil War, racial discrimination was attacked on a particular broad front by the Civil Rights Act of 1875. This legislation made it a crime for an individual to deny “the full and equal enjoyment of any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities,

In some cases the cars were not heated nor did they have windows that opened, which only added to the terrible conditions. If a Black passenger did not want to ride in the “Black car”, there were punishments to make sure the black and white passengers remained separate. For example, if you were a black and you sat in the white car you would either have a fine of $25($540 in today’s money) or 20 days in jail. In 1891, a group of concerned young black men of New Orleans formed the “Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law.” In 1892, a 30-year old shoemaker named Homer Plessy was arrested for sitting in a car for only white people on the East Louisiana Railroad. He had refused to move to a black car. Even though he was seven-eighths white and only one-eighth black, he was put in jail. The Louisiana law stated that if you had any black ancestors, you were considered black. Because of this, Plessy was required to sit in the “colored” or “black”

The White cars were nicer and cleaner than the Black cars. Judge John Howard Ferguson had recently ruled the law “unconstitutional on trains that traveled through many states,” but in this case, Judge Ferguson ruled that Plessy was guilty because the state had the right to regulate railroad companies that run only in the state. Mr. Plessy then appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court of Louisiana which also went against him, saying the separate but equal law was constitutional. Plessy finally appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, because he still believed that the “separate but equal” law violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, because it did not treat Blacks and Whites equally. However, in 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that Homer Plessy was guilty. The court said Mr. Plessy was found guilty, because the Louisiana law did not violate the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. In conclusion, a 7-1 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of