The topic of equality among all Americans has been debated for hundreds of years. In 1892 the landmark case of Plessy v Ferguson made the Supreme Court. A major precedent was set in this case that would be used for many years to come. This precedent would continue to be abided by for around six decades. However before all of that happened in 1890 a monumental statue was passed by the state of Louisiana. Even though the case of Plessy v Ferguson did not reach the Supreme Court until the year 1892, the real issue arose in 1890 when a Louisiana state statute was passed. This statue that was referred to as the Separate Car Act. The statue stated that rail companies carrying passengers in the state of Louisiana must …show more content…
However to the chagrin of Homer Plessy the third time was not the charm. The Supreme Court ended up having the same ruling as the prior two lower courts. The dissenting opinion agreed with Plessy saying that the Separate Car Act was indeed unconstitutional. Justice Henry Billings spoke for the majority, "The object of the [Fourteenth] Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either." The way the majority of the Supreme Court interpreted the fourteenth amendment of the constitution was that the amendment guarantees the right of equality. However it dose not say anything about stopping distinctions based on color, such as segregation. In conclusion the Supreme Court ruled that segregation is okay as long as the different parties are treated equally. The Supreme Court has the job of interpreting the constitution. So when a one eighth black man named Plessy Ferguson was questioning the constitutionality of the Louisiana state Separate Car Act he took it to them. The Supreme Court set a precedent that nearly lasted six decades. In summary the Supreme Court has the power to Change the way things are viewed for decades or even
The petitioner of the case was Homer Plessy, and the respondent of the case was John H. Ferguson. The hearing began on April 13th, 1896, and came to a conclusion on May 18th, 1896. This case was one of the beginning cases for Separate but Equal, and is still remembered to this day. This case all started when Plessy, who was seven eighths white, sat down in the “white” train car and was asked to leave and sit in the “colored” train car.
Plessy v. Ferguson Case The Plessy v. Ferguson case is often looked at as one of the most well-known cases to make it to the U.S. Supreme Court. This case took place in 1896 and received much attention from both the black and white press, and was mainly accountable for the spread of segregation in the United States. In 1890, Louisiana passed a law that required blacks and whites to be separated on railroad cars.
In the past most people believed it was fine to have segregation. One case that clearly demonstrates this view point was “Plessy vs. Ferguson Court Case.” in this cases, a 1/8 black man named Homer Plessy sat in a segregated seat for “Whites” in a train car. He was then arrested for interfering with the Louisiana law. This case went all
Notаbly absent from the opinion, as it was in Plessy, is any citаtion to a Supreme Court cаse that considered whether the prаctice of segregating schools was a violation of the Fourteenth Аmendment. It was an open question for the Court. The Court аdmitted that the precedent to which it cited involved discriminаtion between whites and blacks rаther thаn other rаces. However, the Court found no аppreciable difference here—"the decision is within the discretion of the state in regulating its public schools, and does not conflict with the Fourteenth Аmendment."
The Plessy v. Ferguson case is another example of segregation. In 1892, a black shoemaker named Homer Plessy was jailed for riding in a “white” car in Louisiana. Plessy was considered a Creole of Color because his ancestors traced back to French, Spanish, and Caribbean settlers of Louisiana. The case arose from resentment among black and Creole residents of Louisiana. He went up against the state of Louisiana saying that the Separate Car Act violated the 13th and 14th amendments.
In 1890 “Louisiana enacted a law that required separate railway cars for blacks and whites.” (Oyez). Blacks didn’t agree with this as they believed it went against the reconstruction amendments. For example as stated in the 15th amendment “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state.” (United States, Congress, House).
Plessy v. Ferguson The Supreme Court of Plessy v. Ferguson, argued on April 13, 1896, involved a man identified as Homer Adolph Plessy. Plessy was a man of seven - eighths Caucasian and one - eighths of African descent in the State of Louisiana who was denied to sit in a passenger train car reserved for “whites only.” The case questioned the Supreme Court whether Louisiana’s law mandating racial segregation infringes the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
This caused Homer Plessy to be convicted as guilty since it was against the law for Plessy to be in the wrong railroad car. Homer Plessy’s lawyers made a point that the Supreme Court was violating Homer Plessy’s fourteenth amendment. The fourteenth amendment stated that all citizens with citizenship had rights and equal protection under the law. Since the “separate but equal” was violated also the fourteenth amendment was violated since Homer Plessy wasn’t treated equally even though he was separate. The Louisiana law required that there should be “separate but equal” seating for the whites and African American citizens.
Ferguson, the majority believed that the 13th Amendment was "too clear for argument" and the 14th Amendment stated “it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social…equality.” The court then identified that the 14th Amendment was only concerned with legal equality rather than social equality, so putting different races in separate rail cars wasn't unconstitutional. It was a 7-1 vote therefore the dissenting opinion only consisted of one person, Justice John Marshall Harlan, he states “than state enactments which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens? That, as all will admit, is the real meaning of such legislation as was enacted in Louisiana.
Therefore, this was taken to court when the Judge John Howard Ferguson ruled him guilty of sitting at the seat in the railroad car. He later took the case to the Supreme court. Plessy argued that this violated the 13th and 14th Amendment, while the Supreme Court Judge argued that this did not go against the 14th Amendment, and that white and colored people are not suppose to be in the public places together. The impact of this court cases led to segregation, which is the idea that of “separate but equal”. For the next couple of years, public places like water fountains, schools, and bathrooms are split between the colored and whites.
Justice Henry Brown, for example, was biased in his decision of the Plessy v. Ferguson case. Brown even stated legislation cannot change public attitudes, he wrote, “Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences." In general during the time of the Plessy v. Ferguson case, many people were likely to disagree. The majority of the public saw African Americans as an inferior race, agreeing that there needed to be legislation separating them from whites, resulting in the Jim Crow Laws. Not many people agreed with Plessy and Justice Harlan at the time since they did not agree with the majority’s opinion, that Jim Crow Laws provided no segregation inequality because they were founded on the principle “separate but equal.”
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
Plessy argued that the concept of the “Separate Car Act” violates the 14th Amendment because the amendment states that laws do not have the power to take away or jeopardize any of the citizens’ natural rights (PBS.org). Plessy lost the case when the court claimed that the 14th Amendment only protects legal and political equality among all people, but not social equality; this means the 14th Amendment is not responsible for assuring that people are viewed equally in society or that they are receiving equal services or goods, which confirms the “Separate but Equal” concept as constitutional (Cornell University Law
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.
It was a 7 to 1 decision. The decision was that separate but equal was legal as long as no discrimination was shown. They believed that "so long as separate facilities were actually qualitatively equal, the constitution did not prohibit segregation in the view of the majority of the court," as stated in the second