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The Jim Crow Laws: The Plessy Vs. Ferguson Case

451 Words2 Pages

“What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, 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?”- John Marshall Harlan. On May 18, 1896, the Supreme court passed the separate but equal act on a vote of 7-1. This allowed separate facilities to be made for whites and blacks. This was the result of the Plessy vs Ferguson case, where a man was forced out of a whites-only car because he had African descent. The Supreme court couldn’t find any differences in the train cars, yet separate facilities for blacks had a decrease in quality. After this decision, many laws would be made …show more content…

Most places banned interracial marriage, adoption, or even living together. These kinds of laws had a huge impact on segregation. It separated the races, making everyone believe the world was us or them. Henry Tajfel proposed the Social Identity theory in 1979. This theory says that the group a person belonged to was a source of self-esteem. He whites-only that a group would put another group down to increase their self-image. This kind of thinking was enforced by the Jim Crow laws. The separation of the two groups made it so people would see each other as lesser, allowing more Jim Crow laws to be put in place.

During the Jim Crow era, many activist fought against these laws. Although the activists had a variety of jobs, many of the activists were teachers or scholars. Another similarity is that they all believed that the way to end segregation was to increase education. The school system was segregated, and the white school was always superior. This means the higher positions in jobs would go to whites. By educating african-american children, they were trying to ensure that the next generation would have more

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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.

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To understand the question, focusing on the court cases of Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, we must first understand each court case on its own. Plessy v. Ferguson resulted in the year 1896. The case involved the 1890s Louisiana law that basically stated that there were separate railway carriages that were specifically labeled for blacks only and whites only. Plessy v. Ferguson involved Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black and appeared to look like a white man. Plessy took an open seat in a white only railway car.

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The Plessy v. Ferguson case started because of the Louisiana Separate Car Act. This act required African Americans and whites to sit in segregated compartments in carriers in the state of Louisiana. (Sound smart: Plessy vs. Ferguson, Yohuru Williams) In 1890 this case adopted a law providing “equal but separate accommodations for the white and

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