The Road to Ending Institutional Racism in America The road to end institutional racism in America was rocky, to say the least. It was filled with many setbacks, and triumphant victories that would shape the course of American history. Two court cases in particular, Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, played a significant role in challenging Americas “separate but equal” doctrine. The ruling and precedent first set by Plessy v. Ferguson, was then challenged by Brown v. Board of Education, resulting in them relating to each other based on a changed precedent. The first time separate but equal laws were scrutinized was in 1892.
On the afternoon of June 7th, 1892, Homer Plessy, a shoemaker from Louisiana,
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Some of his and Justice John Harlan's arguments, laid the groundwork for future actions against an oppressive government. Oliver Brown used many of the same arguments as Homer Plessy, such as stating that separate but equal doctrine was unconstitutional because it violated the plaintiffs 13th and 14th amendment rights. While these arguments were before unsuccessful in Plessy v. Ferguson, they were later successfully backed up by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, overruling the earlier set precedent. After the separate but equal precedent was over ruled, separate but equal school facilities were forced to be integrated. Long before this groundbreaking ruling, Justice John Harlan thought that the U.S. constitution should be “color-blind”, and his dreams were one step closer, though he was not there to see it.
Both court cases, Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, showed the power that ordinary people with a dream can hold over an unjust society. First Plessy v. Ferguson challenged Americas separate but equal doctrine but failed to do so successfully, prompting the case Brown v. Board of education which successfully overruled the previous precedent, relating the two cases to one another. The eventual success of the people involved in the cases opened the door for substantial changes in American
Korematsu vs. US: The supreme court case of Korematsu vs. US was during ww2 and shortly after the attacks on pearl harbor. The supreme court decision was 6-3 in Korematsu 's favor, the impact showed that it was a violation oft he 14th amendment which said that everyone had equal protection under law. Plessy vs. Ferguson: The supreme court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson was the case that made segregation legal, the phrase during that time was "Separate but equal.
Homer Plessy, angered because of segregation laws in the 1890’s, specifically opposed the Separate Car Act. This allowed for a “whites only” car in trains. As a civil rights activist, Homer believed that the rights granted to him by the 13th and 14th amendments were being violated. Although mostly white, Plessy fought for equality for everyone. The passing of new segregation laws in the South spurred Plessy into action.
Plessy v. Ferguson was a supreme court case in 1896 and the decision entrenched legal segregation and it made “separate but equal” the law of the land. Brown v. Board of Education was also a supreme court case in 1954 and it ended legal segregation. Plessy was a black man (great grandmother was black) and Plessy violated Louisiana law by sitting in the white part of the train. Plessy sued based on the 14th Amendment and Equal Protection clause. Brown v. Board was a supreme court case that Brown sued the board of Education because the schools were unequal.
The Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 in the case of Hernandez v. Texas was the start of a breakthrough for Mexican Americans in the United States. The case was brought to existence after Pete Hernandez was accused of murder in Jackson County, a small town called Edna, Texas. The special thing about this case that makes it significant was the jury that were including in this trial. It was said that a Mexican American hadn’t served on a jury in the county of Jackson in 25 years. With the help of a Mexican American lawyer, Gustavo Garcia, the case was brought to the highest court level and was beheld as a Violation of the constitution.
The law doesn't care what your skin looks like. They law is there to be a fair way to help and guide people and in the situation Harlan believes they interpreted the law wrong. While Harlan believed that the law doesn't care what color you are another justice who voted against Plessy , Henry Brown believe that no laws were violated. He believed that racial differences didn't violate anything in the Constitution as long as both of the places were “separate but equal”. The phrase separate but equal keeps coming up, but back then when people still thought whites were superior were things really equal?
The “Plessy V. Ferguson” case is a very important case in U.S. history and U.S. civil rights, as it legalized segregation for decades. Homer Plessy appeared to a white man living a Louisiana, but he was ⅛ black, which was considered black in Louisiana. When Plessy tried to board a “whites only” railroad car in protest of Louisiana's “Separate Car Act” that legally separated train cars, he was arrested when he refused to move to colored car on the train. Once the case went through both district and state courts, it moved up to the U.S. Supreme Court where Plessy and his attorney argued that the law ostracized the colored people from the white, which would be unconstitutional. This was known as the “Plessy V. Ferguson” case.
Although never explicitly stated, it was obvious to many at the time, foreign relations greatly pressured the Supreme Court’s decision. British barrister and parliamentarian Anthony Lester went as far as to write, “Although the Court's opinion in Brown made no reference to these considerations of foreign policy, there is no doubt that they significantly influenced the decision." As new Chief Justice, Earl Warren, did much to convince the remaining eight judges to rule in favor of Brown and overturn the doctrine “separate but equal” as supported by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Although most justices were convinced upon further discussion, justices Robert H. Jackson, and Stanley Reed were still uneasy.
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
Though Plessy’s trial failed to justify the equal social treatment they deserved, the unfair decision of the Plessy could not diminish the blacks’ prospect of their equal status in the society. For instance, the trial of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 in which the class action of black parents filed against the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas. Due to the doctrine of “separate but equal”, black children were not allowed to attend in any schools that reserved for white children, so many black children had to walk miles to their assigned school even though there were nearby schools that were closer to their houses. For instance, a third-grader girl, daughter of the plaintiff of the Brown’s case, had to walked six blocks to the bus stop, and then the bus had to ride one more mile to her segregated black school while she could not be allowed to go the white school which was just seven blocks away from her house. As a parent who worried and feared of any dangers that his daughter might face, Brown and other black families together filed against the Board to request the justice for their black children.
Plessy vs. Ferguson, one of the bigger cases in the turning point for rights, gave the black community a big boost forward. There was a man named Homer Adoph Plessy that had a problem with the way things were going at the time and he wanted equal rights. But there was another man named John Ferguson who thought that everything was just skippy. They went to court to settle their quarrel.
In the end the Supreme Court ruled that “Separate but Equal” had no place in public education (Brown V Board of Education). The court’s unanimous ruling proved that the decision made in Plessy V Ferguson which dictated “Separate but Equal” was both morally and constitutionally wrong, for the justices found that segregation between the white and colored races indicated the inferiority of the African American race (Brown V Board of
Plessy vs Ferguson was a controversial case which came up with the phrase "separate but equal. " The case started when Louisiana tried to establish a law that would segregate blacks and white on trains like many states had done. However the black community in New Orleans did not like it however the state legislature approved the law even though there were blacks in the legislature. In 1892 a man named Homer Plessy sat in the white compartment of a train and was kicked off the train by the conductor. Later, lawyer named Albion Tourgee argued that the law was unconstitutional and took it to Supreme Court where the Supreme Court rejected it and ruled in the favor of the law.
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
Before Brown v. Board of Education, there was Plessy v. Ferguson. Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education complement each other. The ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson was the reason for the case of Brown v. Board of Education. In the late 1800’s the south was not the ideal place for a person of color. “Official segregation in the South commenced in 1887 when Florida passed a law that required racially separate transportation” (Lively, 98).
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.