Supreme Court Cases: The Plessy V. Ferguson Case

Plessy v Ferguson 1896 June 7, 1892 Homer Plessy boarded a Louisiana train and as a black man chose to sit in the whites-only car. This was not the first time a black person broke the law to try to change it nor would it be the last. It was a particularly memorable incident because the term “separate but equal” came about and there was a negative impact on the lives of black Americans for many decades. Plessy was arrested for violating the Separate Car Act of 1890 and with the help of the Comite` des Citoyens, he hoped to change the world for black citizens in the United States. Unfortunately, John Howard Ferguson, then, later the United States Supreme Court got in Plessy’s way.

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 “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.

In 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, therefore racial segregation of public schools were as well. The author illustrates how Thurgood Marshal led the litigation march to civil rights in America accomplishing this and much more in his judicial career. Another great achievement of Marshall that Barnes writes about is the notorious Brown vs. Board of Education Topeka (1937). This was a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all the lack parents who were forced to send their kids to an all-black segregated school. This is the most important case in the 20th century because it challenged and overturned the separate but equal Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case.

Homer Plessy refused to sit in a ‘Jim Crow’ car, referring to Jim Crow who implemented many of the segregation laws. The Criminal Court in New Orleans brought Plessy before their judge; John Ferguson. Though the 13th and 14th Amendments clearly state the abolishment of slavery and that all persons born or naturalised within the United States of America deserve equal civil treatment, John Ferguson found a way around these constitutional laws. The case was passed on to the Supreme Court, who said that the state law “implies merely a legal distinction” between black and white citizens and that it did not come into conflict with the 13th or 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court said that the 14th Amendment’s purpose was “to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law…Laws…requiring their separation…do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race.” Furthermore, the Supreme Court stated that “assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the coloured race with a badge of inferiority.

The freedom in the new society led to more improvements and beliefs on how to make the changed society better. During the period of Reconstruction, three new amendments passed that had to do with the freedom and rights of freed African Americans. The 13th Amendment, passed in 1865, abolished slavery once and for all. Passed in 1866, the 14th Amendment gave everyone who was born in America full citizenship. Lastly, the 15th Amendment said that no citizen can be denied the right to vote because of your race, the color of your skin, or of previous conditions of enslavement.

They say without this right people can or will be easily ignored or the worst part abused by their own government and this is what exactly happened to African American citizens that were left living in the South following Civil War Reconstruction Era. Clearly despite the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth amendments that guaranteed the civil rights of African Americans to their right to vote was thoroughly taken away from them by white racist state governments. If a African American citizen was even attempting to exercise his or her right to vote they would often be threatened with losing their job, threats of being abused and actually being verbally abused from a white’s and the white voting clerks which also helped prevented black Southerners from voting out of fear. For those who were not afraid to lose their job or other things all other things that racist white did to them failed, it lead to maybe mob violence and even lynching among other things ended up keeping blacks people away from the voting ballot boxes. Since they did not have the power of the ballot the African Americans in the South had little to no type of influence in their communities.

Student’s name Professor’s name Course details Date Racism Depicted in “Prom Night in Mississippi” While we are created differently to embrace the beauty of diversity, our egocentrism takes us outside the path to embracing racism. Racism in my definition is a negative feeling that an individual from another race is inferior due to the abilities, characteristics and the natural outlook that they project. Such feeling then brings about the external manifestation of discrimination, prejudice, and antagonism which comes out as hate, something we call racism. Racism has been fought for a long time more in the United States of America though there are remaining challenges therein. The main issue here is because the United States of America integrates

Dred Scott v. Sandford is one of the darkest cases in the history of the Supreme Court. After years of slavery, parts of the United States were beginning to head in a direction away from slavery. The establishment of the Missouri Compromise and gaining some territories as slave states and others as free states, was proof of this shift from slavery, especially in the north (Pearson Education Inc. 2005). The Scott v. Sandford decision, in which an African American man was denied both his freedom and his citizenship to the United States, did not link up with this new way of thinking. The divided opinion amongst the Justices illustrated the divided nation (Scott v. Sandford 1875).

After the Union won the Civil War, slaves were given freedom, but African Americans were not completely free. President Andrew Johnson had very lenient policies for Reconstruction after the Civil War, which allowed southerners from the Confederate states to enact restrictive laws against blacks. These laws were called “Black Codes”, and were primarily designed to restrict African Americans’ labor and activity even though slavery had already been abolished. The Black Codes took away rights from African Americans that were guaranteed to them by the Fourteenth Amendment. For example, some states had laws that required African Americans to sign labor contracts each year and if they refused, they could be arrested, fined, or forced to work without pay.

The Strange Career of Jim Crow, published in 1955 by C. Vann Woodward, actually helped to shaped a part of U.S history. It was around the same time when the Civil Rights Movement was happening in the United States and right after the Supreme Court ’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education; this book was published to expose a clear and illuminating analysis of the history of the Jim Crow Laws. The south had choices to make regarding race, and the establishment; Jim Crow was not a person but was affiliate to represent the system of government and segregation in the United States. Named after the ‘racial caste system,’ Jim Crow affected millions of americans. Woodward analyzes the impact on the segregation between the North and the South by defining an argument, “Racism was originated in the North.” During

Segregation led to whites and blacks not being able to marry. The state argued that they couldn 't take away the right to marry because of their race. The fact that Virginia only prohibited marriage between whites and blacks is proof that thus alone caused the discrimination. Finally, J. Stewart argued that this state law wasn 't valid, which causes the act of discrimination. Many Supreme Court cases have experienced this, and has had the biggest impact on Civil Rights and Equality: Dred Scott vs. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Loving v. Virginia.

The 15th Amendment (Amendment XV), which gave African-American men the right to vote, was inserted into the U.S. Constitution on March 30, 1870. Passed by Congress the year before, the amendment says, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Although the amendment was passed in the late 1870s, many racist practices were used to oppose African-Americans from voting, especially in the Southern States like Georgia and Alabama. After many years of racism, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 aimed to overthrow legal barricades at the state and local levels that deny African-Americans their right to vote. In the

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.

The Supreme Court ruled in their favor stating, "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." However this decision did not suppress the racist ideals of Americans but in fact worsened them. In deep southern states, massive resistance against the new law erupted in protests, riots, and racial violence against the strive for equality. Some public schools even closed their doors rather than integrate and even reacted with