Plessy vs. Ferguson and Brown vs. Board of Education
In 1890, the state of Louisiana passed the "Separate Car Act." This act required and established the use of the notorious doctrine "separate, but equal." This meant that on railroads and train cars, blacks and whites could be separated as long as the divided facilities were equal and the same. It was like a way to segregate blacks and whites without being morally wrong. They believed that they were not doing any wrong, because the people were still "equal" under the law. Some African Americans and whites were particularly bothered with this act, feeling discriminated against. One particular being, Homer Plessy Ferguson, who was "seven eighths Caucasian and one eighth African blood",
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Education Cases later on. In 1951, a suit was filed against the Board of Education in the City of Topeka, Kansas. This suit insisted the Board of Education to reverse its segregation policies. Thirteen parents and their 20 children were the plaintiffs in this court case. Colored kids, were required to travel a longer distance to get to school that whites in the area. It often seemed like everything was made more difficult for minorities, for no apparent reason, other than hatred. The ruling of this case was very important, because it would overturn the Plessy vs. Ferguson case. The question was not whether the schools were "equal," which they were under Plessy, but whether the doctrine of "separate" was constitutional, which was ruled as a "no" by the justices. In the end, the majority concluded that "Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to retard the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system." This ruling deemed the doctrine "separate but equal" unnecessary, which overturned the Plessy case, and said the plaintiffs had been denied equal protection of the law under the fourteenth amendment. The Supreme Court has realized that there is no real reason to discriminate and segregate races, as it only was creating more problems for the individuals in the future. The psychoactive and mental aspect of civilians was overlooked greatly in the past, and the U.S. focused on what made it grow materialistically and economically. With growing populations of all intervening races and ethnicities, the country was forced to make decisions to help the minority populations in the future, not for the angered majorities who would soon be dead in some 50 years. The idealized version of America also had to be changed, because life was not like being on the set of “Leave It To
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (U.S. 1896) gave states the legal right to require persons of different races to use separate but equal segregated facilities. But that ruling was struck down in the landmark case of Brown v. Bd. of Educ. , 347 U.S. 483 (U.S. 1954), In that case the court held that separate but equal public schools based on race is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and is unconstitutional. In upholding that decision, Cooper v. Aaron held that state governments must comply with Supreme Court rulings and court orders based on the its interpretation of the
The decision of this case provided constitutional sanction until overruled by the Brown v. Board of Education case. This case introduced the “Separate but Equal” Act. The Plessy v. Ferguson case legalized segregation in public accommodations, education, and
In 1890, the state of Louisiana passed a law (the Separate Car Act) that required separate accommodations for blacks and whites on railroads, including separate railway cars.[2] Concerned, a group of prominent black, creole, and white New Orleans residents formed the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) dedicated to repeal the law or fight its effect.[3] They persuaded Homer Plessy, a man of mixed race, to participate in an orchestrated test case. Plessy was born a free man and was an "octoroon" (of seven-eighths European descent and one-eighth African descent). However, under Louisiana law, he was classified as black, and thus required to sit in the "colored" car.[4]
“Separate but equal” It was a phrase that haunts time as a decision that created an insurmountable amount of tension between races, until it was stricken down later in history. Though the decisions of Brown v. Board of Education and Plessy v. Ferguson were the exact opposite, Plessy v. Ferguson directly influenced the decision of Brown v. Board of Education. The court case Plessy v. Ferguson was case brought by Mr. Homer Plessy, who was appealing because he believed the rail car company had no reason to move him from his car just because he was ⅛ black, meaning his great grandfather was black. The Supreme Court’s decisions would go in favor of the rail car company and would echo into history the support of the US in believing the separate
Whites were making a good effort to equalize the two educational systems, but black children were still living in the effects of slavery so it would be some time before they could compete with white children in the same classroom. Case Decision The case decision was in favor of the plaintiffs. The clause “separate but equal” was determined to be unconstitutional. I agree with the decision made because it actually made everyone equal and created a place where people were not discriminated against just because of their skin color.
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,
The Louisiana Railway Accommodations Also called the “Separate Car Act,” “The Louisiana Railway Accommodations Act” was a law that was enacted by legislature in the state of Louisiana in 1890. The Act is remembered as one of the most controversial laws that contributed to the negative aspects of the “gilded age.’ The Act assigned the Whites and African Americans and other people of color separate accommodations in railroads located within Louisiana. However, segregation issues emerged after implementation of the law, which triggered negative reactions from the African Americans. The African Americans realized that the Separate Car Act led them to be treated as inferior citizens.
However, their dissents were eventually dropped and on May 17, 1954, it was unanimously decided by the United States Supreme Court to rule in favor of Brown and overturn the long endorsed precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson. The courts stated: “segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group.”
Plessy lost the Supreme Court ruling by a 7-1 decision. This decision created the “separate but equal” doctrine. Brown vs Board of Education is a well known case in the 1950’s. This case
The famous outcome of Plessy V. Ferguson (separate but equal) awakened the hunger of the African American society. African Americans sought to gain equal rights in the field of education. In Brown v. Board of Education, decided May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court collectively held that segregated public schools are constitutionally differing and so it stripped African American students of their Fourteenth Amendment right to equal security. This overall agreement completely upturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that entrenched the “separate but equal” doctrine and allowed laws wanting isolated places for blacks and whites.
The Compromise of 1877 officially ended the Reconstruction Era by pulling out the last of the troops located in the South who monitored the progress of the newly enacted amendments. The Southern Democrats’ civil rights laws promised by the Democrats were betrayed as they resumed oppressing black Americans socially, politically, and economically. Segregation and institutional racism perpetuated through a multitude of laws, anti-black politicians in positions of power, and forced, unscrupulous labor were factors that continued to keep black Americans inferior to the white man in the years following the Reconstruction (Compromise of 1877). The supreme court case known as Plessy vs. Ferguson gave legal right to a separate but equal policy in education
For nearly a century, the United States was occupied by the racial segregation of black and white people. The constitutionality of this “separation of humans into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life” had not been decided until a deliberate provocation to the law was made. The goal of this test was to have a mulatto, someone of mixed blood, defy the segregated train car law and raise a dispute on the fairness of being categorized as colored or not. This test went down in history as Plessy v. Ferguson, a planned challenge to the law during a period ruled by Jim Crow laws and the idea of “separate but equal” without equality for African Americans. This challenge forced the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of segregation, and in result of the case, caused the nation to have split opinions of support and
The ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson said that all black and white people will be separate but equal, but in reality, this was not the case ("Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)"). Whites were of course given the most elaborate and fancy equipment when in public; from schools to water fountains to bathrooms, whites were living in complete luxury compared to the increasingly struggling blacks of the time. A major flaw with the idea of segregation, was the issue of schooling. Whites were given the better schools with better teachers, while blacks had schools that were very poor and not the best teachers. Because of this, African-Americans were again being penalized just because of their race, truly showing how unequal their lives really were.
In 1891, a group of concerned young black men of New Orleans immediately formed the “Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law.” They raised money and engaged Albion W. Tourgée, a prominent Radical Republican author and politician, as their lawyer. The poeple involved in this case are the young concerned black men the us government and the states. On May 15, 1892, the Louisiana State Supreme Court decided in favor of the Pullman Company’s claim that the Separate Car Law was unconstitutional. The importance of this case is that In 1883, the Supreme Court finally ruled that the 14th Amendment did not give Congress authority to prevent discrimination by private individuals(Plessy v.
Supreme Court Decisions Setting Precedent Discrimination may not seen as big a problem today, but people had to fight for that problem, and court cases set precedents for today. The case of Plessy versus Ferguson and Brown versus Board of Education helped change the way we view discrimination today. The case of Plessy versus Ferguson decided that segregation was legal as long as everything was equal. But on the other hand, Brown versus Board of Education included separate but equal schools made African-American children feel inferior to the white children. 1896, Supreme Court heard the Plessy versus Ferguson case.