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Plessy V Ferguson Case Study
Plessy v ferguson brown v board
Plessy V Ferguson Case Study
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Plessy V Ferguson Case Study
Plessy v ferguson brown v board
Plessy V Ferguson Case Study
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The Abbott case however didn't apply to intrastate commerce, travel that is entirely inside the borders of Louisiana, so Martimet and Tourgée began to look for yet another lighter skinned black to test the law. In the end they found Homer Plessy, a member of the citizens' committee that raised the money for the original case. Plessy walked into Press Street Depot on June 7, 1892 and bought a first class ticket to Covington, he boarded the East Louisiana Railroad train. As the train preceded to pull away a conductor approached Plessy and asked if he was a colored man. Plessy told the man he was and was asked to move to the colored car, but Plessy refused to do so.
Plessy v Fergusen was yet another court case where “separate but equal” was not implementing equality. It showed that they still thought of Black men and women as being less and not deserving the same rights as the White men. Homer Plessy was a free man, that was mainly White and because of a percentage he had of being Black he was treated as a Black man. He tried to sit in the train car of the White men and much like Rosa Parks was asked to go to the back where the Black men belonged in a different car. This case resulted in the Supreme Court defending the decision of the East Louisiana Railroad stating that they weren't violating any law by the ruling they had.
The novel Passing of Nella Larsen held the historical and legal implications which can be seen through the judicial case of Homer Plessy who had one-eighth black and seven- eighths white. Plessy was forcibly jailed for sitting in the whites- only section on the railroad car in Louisiana. In 1896, at the Supreme Court, he argued that his black ancestry was insignificant and he was a white person by all definitions. The Supreme Court said that forcing Plessy to exclude from the whites section was against the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments about equal protection. However, Judge John Howard Ferguson affirmed that treating all people equally did not paralleled with eliminating social distinction based on colors.
The South, home to most African Americans in that time, sought out ways to legally exclude African Americans. Homer Plessy had decided to test new segregation laws that had been passed a year earlier. A few months prior, Daniel Desdunes had also sat in the whites-only section, and his case had never made it to trial. However, in Plessy’s case, the Supreme Court was able to rule the new laws constitutional in a seven to one decision; “separate but equal” would be completely legal if both sections are equal.
This document is from the dissent of Mr. Justice Harlan in the Plessy v. Ferguson trial decided on May 18, 1896. His audience is the assenting Justices, and any citizen of the United States that reads the decision handed down by the court. Justice Harlan wrote his Dissent to the case to establish that the assenting judges were amiss in their decision to uphold the Louisiana Separate Car Act. Justice Harlan believes that the decision of the court is wrong on the basis that, if read as purported the U.S. Constitution has no caste, and is therefore color blind. He says “the white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country.
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.
Plessy v. Ferguson The Supreme Court of Plessy v. Ferguson, argued on April 13, 1896, involved a man identified as Homer Adolph Plessy. Plessy was a man of seven - eighths Caucasian and one - eighths of African descent in the State of Louisiana who was denied to sit in a passenger train car reserved for “whites only.” The case questioned the Supreme Court whether Louisiana’s law mandating racial segregation infringes the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The White cars were nicer and cleaner than the Black cars. Judge John Howard Ferguson had recently ruled the law “unconstitutional on trains that traveled through many states,” but in this case, Judge Ferguson ruled that Plessy was guilty because the state had the right to regulate railroad companies that run only in the state. Mr. Plessy then appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court of Louisiana which also went against him, saying the separate but equal law was constitutional. Plessy finally appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, because he still believed that the “separate but equal” law violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, because it did not treat Blacks and Whites equally. However, in 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that Homer Plessy was guilty.
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.
Ferguson case was passed in 1896. “This decision approved segregation of the races as being consistent with the 14th amendment and formulated the doctrine of "separate but equal" facilities. It served as a legal basis for segregation in education. The case arose when one Homer A. Plessy, who was 7/8ths caucasian and 1/8th negro, was arrested for entering a railroad coach reserved for whites and refusing to sit in a segregated couch for negroes. The court, speaking through Justice Henry B Brown, found that these "separate but equal accommodations" satisfied the demands of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Ferguson was a court case that arose in Louisiana, and it created a drastically different atmosphere in 1896. This court case gave state laws that required black and white people to use separate facilities. The case came into light when Homer Plessy, an African-American, never moved to the “colored only” section on a train. Plessy was said to have had his Fourteenth Amendment violated because the separated facilities were discriminating; however the Court stated that the separate facilities were separate yet equal. Separate yet equal means that people have the same rights, but are separated by their race, religion, and wealth.
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
This case went to the Supreme Court, where Plessy lost and the doctrine “separate but equal” was adopted (Document 10). This disproved the 14th Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (Document 2). This amendment grants citizenship and equal protection of innate rights and protection under the court of law, in simple terms. Plessy was denied fair trial due to the fact that he was of African descent.
Particularly in the South, they continued to seek opportunities to legal slavery. As a result, Southerners pass a state law, Black Codes, during reconstruction. This law restricted the civil rights and public activities of legally freed African Americans. Owning weapons, freedom of movement, and land ownerships were against Black Codes. Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), the court case that upheld authority of the state law claiming, “separate-but-equal facilities for whites and blacks” , led up to another significant factor, segregation, which arose to be controversy in mid-1900s.
Plessy, contending that the Louisiana law separating blacks from whites on trains violated the "equal protection clause" of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, decided to fight his arrest in court. By 1896, his case had made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court. By a vote of 8-1, the Supreme Court ruled against Plessy. This case was known as the Plessy vs. Ferguson. Another case that African Americans had to face was called Brown v. Board of Education.