The Plessy Vs. Ferguson Case

Topic: Scottsboro Trials Sources: Remembering Scottsboro: The legacy of an infamous trial, The Trials of the Scottsboro boys, and Scottsboro and its legacy: The cases that challenged american legal and social justice. Thesis: The Scottsboro Trials were an important piece of history because it was a huge stepping stone of the civil rights movement and it showed the racial inequality in America which was then taken to the supreme court. (support statement) No crime in American history, produced as many trials, convictions, reversals and retrials as did the alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers. (Supported Statement 2)

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.

Martin Luther King Jr. had an enormous role in shaping our United States society. His rough upbringing would fire his passion to see a change in all the laws on segregation. Still after the emancipation proclamation had been signed by our 16th president 100 years before, America still faced laws that separated African Americans and whites from living together in society. These discriminative laws made it unfortunate for any black family to live comfortably in the Untied States. King died for what he believed in and because of that, he shaped our culture and society to what it is today.

Ferguson had an unbelievable amount to do with the case of Brown v. Board of Education. The court case, involving Brown v. Board of Education took place in the year 1954. It was filed against the Topeka , Kansas school bored by Oliver Brown who was a parent to a child that was denied admission at a white school in Topeka. Brown argued that the racial segregation in Topeka disobeys the constitutions Equal Protection Clause. He states this because he did not believe that Topeka’s white schools and black schools were equal.

Discrimination against blacks was happening in both the North and the South equally. While the Plessy vs. Ferguson case declared facilities were to be “separate but equal”, they were separate and unequal for 60 years. In Document C, there is a water fountain where one side is for whites, while the other side is for colored. This only created more tension between whites and blacks, and made the fight even harder for everyone to be treated equally. African Americans will always get the run down part of the bus and the dirtier water fountain.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954), was a landmark case impacting the public school system with making segregation within the school system a violation against the law. It showed how separate but equal no longer made sense in America. Leading up to the groundbreaking court case, the country was divided by segregation. In the south, there were Jim Crow Laws and the white population tried to limit the power the African-American population had within the community. In the north there was a large migration of African Americans looking for a better life in the larger cities.

This plan backfired in their face. It made schools more equal for both even though the blacks were more poor. The case of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education is important because kids have to realize that all people are equal. Everyone deserves the right to

Dr. King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” goes in to detail about the injustice that existed on the streets of America in the 1960s, and it can still be used now to discuss the injustice on the streets today. King discusses how unjust laws were made to broken (such as with Hitler and the Jewish population and the Hungarian Freedom Fighters), and that no progress would ever be made if actions weren’t taken immediately. Today, issues with police brutality and racism against immigrants (“They are taking our jobs!” is a line often used by the white population of America when talking about jobs they would never consider applying for anyway) is at an all-time high, and Dr. King’s letter can be applied to the current situation: action must be taken immediately.

For example, open Black support of harsh punishment and law enforcement may seem hypocritical because in reality these policies and practices contribute to mass incarceration of Blacks. Alexander clarifies that Black support is more complex than it appears and can be attributed to a combination of complicity and wanting better safety for their communities and families (Alexander, 2012, p.210). Alexander also offers a unique perspective throughout the entire book by explaining how the systems of slavery and oppression have affected White individuals and not merely in the form of privilege or the dismissal of White people as simply as racist individuals. I resonated with one particular section discussing the "White victims of racial caste" (Alexander, 2012, p.204); the author 's anecdote of a white woman falling in love with a Black man and due to miscegenation laws could not have children. I could relate to this story on a deeply personal level in that my own parents experienced extreme and countless hurdles due to their interracial relationship and having biracial

The United States Supreme Court struck down segregation in the country 's government funded schools—causing racial tension in education. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man in 1955, and that started the civil rights movement. Riots, bombings, beatings and shootings were the regular as African Americans protested in the following years. Those protests eventually moved President John F. Kennedy to send to Congress a civil rights bill on June 19, 1963.

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.

The Scottsboro case contributed to this situation in a very large way. Before the case blacks were automatically judged because the color of their skin. The two women who were allegedly raped on the train were white. All eight of the men accused were black men under the age of twenty. Considering these things it is obvious to see that many people treated the Scottsboro boys differently, because of their skin color.

Some people fail to see the way that major court cases in the United States history helped shape the way that the government is formed today. People with a black skin tone used to be harassed and treated differently than people with white skin tone simply because of the of the fact that they were colored. Well, that was until the Civil Rights Acts were passed. Three of the Supreme Court cases that influenced the civil rights movement by ruling certain things unconstitutional that were once considered okay: Dred Scott v. Sanford, and Plessy v. Ferguson, and Brown v. Board of Education.

However the case started off slow processed, the case getting bigger and friends and family got the news about the case and wanted to help and support The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Brown family as well. The U.S District Court for the District of Kansas heard about Brown’s case around June 25-26, 1951. The Federal District Court decided that segregation for educations were harmful to the black children. However all black and white schools have the same buildings, teachers, and the transportation, the segregation were

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.