Case Brief - Plessy v. Ferguson Homer A. Plessy v. John H. Ferguson was a US Supreme Court case between Homer Plessy, the plaintiff, and John Ferguson, the defendant. The year this case took was place was 18961. This case almost entirely deals with the Louisiana Law passed six years prior that provided “equal but separate” railway carriages for white and colored races. The constitutionality of this law was brought into this case as Homer Plessy, who refused to sit in the colored only rail car, argued it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
An example of a Supreme Court overturning, would be Plessy vs Ferguson. States from the south had laws that had a disadvantage for black people. Plessy who is a light colored black, decided to sit on the white section of the train, and declared his ancestry a couple of minutes after. People demanded him to move, but he refused. He was arrested for not moving.
The nation was gridlocked on how to proceed, whether to declare a Civil War or not. The Fort Sumter conflict provided the answer; Fort Sumter was a garrison on the coast of SC that was being blocked by “Confederate” troops, therefore the Union could not provide military supplies and rations for the people inhabiting the fort. Later the confederates would fire upon fort and started the Civil war. The Civil War would last four years, concluding with the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House. However the time during the Civil War provided for many racial and slaveholding changes for America including: the Emancipation Proclamation, 13th, 14th , and 15th amendments.
In 1857 the court case of Dread Scott v. Stanford and in 1896 the case Plessy v. Ferguson were introduced into the Supreme Court. They showed people of color were not considered to be anything other than property; the whole majority had no regard for the feelings of another person. The notion of slavery was just coming to light in the United States. As time grew on, the slaves and former slaves were rightly becoming increasingly outraged. Through evaluating language of exclusion throughout both Dread Scott v. Stanford and Plessy v. Ferguson concurrently, anyone can recognize the effects of dehumanization negatively impacting members of the black community.
Homer Plessy was a brave man willing to stand up against southern Jim Crow laws, and that is fate in the Supreme Court is unfair. The Separate Car Act dictates that separate races must sit in separate cars, which is segregatory, and passed by the state of Louisiana. This is in direct violation of the 14th, and rightfully deserved to be challenged. African Americans everywhere should be able to use their rights earned by four long years of bloodshed, and not be dampened by the courts. But the court overlooked the fact that it was an state law, and not private policy, and deemed the segregation private and thus legal.
Plesssy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of education both dealt with one of America 's biggest problems segregation. Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education both delt with segregation, Plessy v. Ferguson was on the Louisiana rail road act, Brown v. Board of Education was on the separate but equal clause, and they were both related. In Plessy v. Ferguson was a dispute between on Louisiana rail road act which made it illegal for whites and blacks to sit together in a rail car. Homer Plessy was a man who severed as the vice president for the Justice, Protective, Educational and Social Club in New Orleans.
One of the most controversial cases that dealt with racial discrimination which transpired in the early 1960’s was the case of Simkins versus Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital. The plaintiff, George Simkins Jr., DDS (Doctor of Dental Surgery), who acted as a president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) local chapter, was a renowned, honored dentist, and a civil rights activist from Greensboro, North Carolina. While the defendant, Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital was accused of denying admitting entitlement to black physicians and dentists, admittance of black patients, and training of black interns. However, the juridical reasoning applied in the Simkins lawsuit was not just about disparity, but the fact
In the case of Missouri vs. Seibert lies many liable facts within the case. Some of the relevant facts is that a woman named Patrice Seibert along with accomplices which includes her son and his friends, sets their mobile home on fire with the dead body of her 12-year-old son along with a mentally ill 17-year-old Donald Rector whom was living in the household, and days after the fire, Seibert was interrogated by a police officer. The officer initially withheld her Miranda warnings, hoping to get a confession from her first. Once she had confessed, the officer took a short break from questioning, then preceded to read her, her Miranda rights and resumed questioning after she waived those rights. The officer swayed her to reiterate the confession
The Dred Scott Decision & History Dred Scott was a African American born in 1795 (1800) to a slave family, in Southampton County, Virginia. Dred Scott was owned by Peter Blow and his family who later moved to Alabama then to Missouri. In the year 1832 Peter passed away Scott was then bought by an army surgeon Dr. John Emerson. In 1836 Scott fell in love with Harriet Robinson, Dr. Emerson bought her and they soon were wed. Soon after Emerson took both slaves and his family with him to the states of Illinois and Wisconsin both of which were free states at the time. John Emerson most likely didn't see this to be an issue since he did not consider himself to live in the state, only to be stationed there.
Brown V. Board of Education was a court case that challenged the idea of “Separate but equal”, the cause of this court case was that there was segregation going on in certain areas such as stores, parks, and even schools. One of the major causes of this court case was the Plessy V. Ferguson court case. The idea of the Brown V. Board of Education court case was to challenge the “Separate but equal” policy. The separate but equal policy was the idea that blacks and whites are separated but are still equal.
Homer Plessy was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black and agreed to test the constitution parts of the Separate Car Law. In 1892, Homer Plessy was arrested because he bought a ticket for a trip and sat down in an empty seat in a white-only train car. Hon. John H. Ferguson of the U.S. District Court dismissed Homer’s claims that his arrest was unconstitutional.
Problems emerging from slavery's western development caused issues for the U.S. from the beginning. Fights arose over the westward expansion of slavery and over the position of the government in securing the attention of slave owners. Northern and Southern states started to oppose on the duties of the government in seizing and delivering runaway slaves back to their owners. Slaves remained essential to the country's economy, powering the south's plantation economy as well as giving crude materials to the Northern industrial economy. As the nation pushed westward in its quest for new land, people started wondering whether those grounds should be slave-states or free.