Plessy v. Ferguson/Background In 1891 a group of people in New Orleans formed the Citizens’ Committee to test the constitutionality of the Separate Car Law. Homer Adolph Plessy, agreed to be the plaintiff in the case, aimed at testing the law’s constitutionality. On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a ticket on a train and took a seat in a whites-only car. When he was told he had to sit in the car for blacks, he refused. After refusing to move to a car for African Americans, he was arrested and charged with violating the Separate Car Act. This law meant white and African American passengers were prohibited from entering accommodations other than those to which they had been assigned on the basis of their race. Ruling On May 18, 1896 the Plessy V. …show more content…
Board of Education/Background Before the Brown V. Board of Education case, life for African Americans was very poor. African Americans were segregated from whites in most places. One of those places was the school. An organization called the NAACP created a law firm called the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to put an end to segregation. In the late 1940’s, the NAACP put an effort out to challenge the segregation of school systems in different states. The NAACP encouraged the members of the African American community to try to enroll their children into all white schools. An African American man named Oliver Brown tried to enroll his daughter into an all white school but he was told his daughter could not attend the all white school and he would have to enroll his daughter into a school for African Americans. Brown and the NAACP filed a class-action lawsuit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The NAACP claimed that the education that was offered to African Americans was inferior to the education that was offered to whites. The NAACP’s main argument was that segregation was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. The Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. No State can make or enforce any law which can abridge the privileges of citizens of the United States; nor should any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without the required process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the