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Homer Plessy Case Study

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The case involving Homer Plessy, who was brought before Judge John H. Ferguson of the Criminal Court in New Orleans originated in 1892 as a challenge to Louisiana’s Separate Car Act of 1890. The law required that all railroads operating in the state of Louisiana provide equal but separate accommodations for white and African American passengers and prohibited passengers from entering accommodations other than those to which they had been assigned on the basis of their race. It banned whites from sitting in the black cars and blacks in white cars and penalized employees for violating its terms, with the exception of nurses caring children of the other race. However there was an exception to this law that the law could not be applied to interstate …show more content…

He said that the Separate Car Act did not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment because it did not reestablish slavery or constitute a “badge” of slavery or servitude. His answer relied on the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Civil Rights Cases in 1883 which found that racial discrimination against African Americans in places of public amusement, public conveyances, and inns impose no badge of involuntary servitude or slavery, but at most infringes rights which are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment but pointed that the Act did not come into conflict with the Amendment (History.com Plessy v. Ferguson). Brown argued that the legal equality was adequately respected because it provided each race equal accommodations and because the racial segregation of passengers did not itself imply the inferiority of either race. In contrast, social equality in public conveyances and areas did not exist and could not be legally created (“Plessy v. Ferguson”). He said, “The object of the Fourteenth Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either” (“Landmark …show more content…

“Plessy v. Ferguson.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 7 Feb. 2018, www.britannica.com/event/Plessy-v-Ferguson-1896.
History.com Staff. “14th Amendment.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www. history.com/topics/black-history/fourteenth-amendment.
History.com Staff. “Plessy v. Ferguson.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www. history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson.
History.com Staff. “13th Amendment.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www. history.com/topics/black-history/thirteenth-amendment.
“Landmark Cases of the U.S. Supreme Court.” Plessy v. Ferguson | Www.streetlaw.org, landmarkcases.org/en/landmark/cases/plessy_v_ferguson#Tab=Overview.
McBride, Alex. “The Supreme Court . The First Hundred Years . Landmark Cases . Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) | PBS.” Thirteen - Media With Impact, www.thirteen.org /wnet/supremecourt/antebellum/landmark_plessy.html.
“Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).” Our Documents - Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), www.our documents.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=52.
“Plessy v. Ferguson.” LII / Legal Information Institute, www.law.cornell.edu/

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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.

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The Plessy vs Ferguson court case originated in 1892. On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in a white car of a Louisiana train. Despite his white complexion, Plessy was considered to be “octoroon” which meant that he was 7/8 white and 1/8 black. Plessy intentionally sat on the white car and announced himself a black. Plessy challenged the separate car act which required that all railroads operating in the state provide “equal but separate accommodations” for White and African-American passengers and prohibited passengers from entering accommodations other than those to which they had been assigned on the basis of their race.

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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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Plessy V. Ferguson. In 1890, Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which required whites and blacks to ride in separate train cars. In 1892, Homer Plessy was arrested for sitting in a “whites only” car. Plessy filed a lawsuit declaring that his constitutional rights had been violated. However, the US Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that separate accommodations were constitutional as long as they were equal.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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(2017). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Retrieved from:http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson Alex Mc B. (2007). PBS. Retrieved from: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/antebellum/landmark_plessy.html Jim Crow Law Jim Crow Laws. (2017).

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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

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The supreme court case Plessy vs. Ferguson was an important case in the history of the U.S. supreme court. The case of Plessy vs. Ferguson took place in the supreme court on May 18, 1896. Ultimately, this 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case upheld the constitutionality of segregation under the doctrine of “separate but equal”. The final decision was decided by a majority vote of 7 to 1 against Plessy. The decision outcome report was written by Justice Henry Brown, and the explanation for the decision was written by Justice John Harlan.

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On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in the Plessy vs. Ferguson law case that separate-but-equal facilities on trains were constitutional.” It is deplorable that such laws were created by Southern Republics to ensure that African Americans would maintain to be treated inferior to them. This includes making segregation a law. Blacks and whites could no longer dine together, sit on the bus together, get an education together,

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Ferguson” written in 1896 by Mr. Justice Brown grotesquely discriminated against people of color and attempted to justify it using the 14th Amendment as a loophole for blatant racism. The document was written following the civil war in the southern state of Louisiana. The southern United States still had a rather old fashioned way of thinking towards equality and was not happy with the outcome of the Civil War years after its settlements. Racism against people of color was still heavily favored because they were still viewed as inhumane, and unworthy of equal treatment. The essential basis of the document “Plessy v. Ferguson” reinstates laws concerning the accommodations of railways for “colored people” and whites.

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One of the most important cases about Jim Crow Laws was Plessy v. Ferguson. Plessy v. Ferguson was one of the most problematic Supreme Court cases. The case was brought up by Homer Plessy, who had been arrested for sitting in a “whites-only” part of a train. He claimed that this violated his 13th amendment rights. However, the court ruled that racial segregation did not violate the United States Constitution, as although

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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.

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Which destroyed the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision which established separate but equal. In Brown v. Board of Education, Oliver Brown from Topeka, Kansas sued the school board in his city because of his

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