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Homer Plessy Vs. Fergusen: Supreme Court Case

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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. This court case showed that even if Plessy was a part White because he was a part …show more content…

State of Louisiana. His lawyers argued that the East Louisiana Railroad had denied his rights given to him under his 13th and 14th Amendment. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in all states and the 14th Amendment declared that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are American citizens including African Americans. He fought that according to these Amendments Plessy should be treated as an American citizen, the same as a White man, regardless of his 1/8th of being African American. The name of the Judge in his court case was Ferguson. He decided that the railroad had the right to implement their own laws and that those laws would need to be followed.
The court case ended in that Plessy was convicted and had to pay a fine of $25.00. After being trialed he attempted a writ of prohibition but the Supreme Court sustained the verdict Judge Fergusen had decided on. The Supreme Court decided that the East Louisiana Railroad had not broken any laws by dividing the cars for Black and White men. They said each Railroad station had a right to make its own rules to protect their passengers and for the best results for the company. They also said that the 13th and 14th Amendments were not being violated by the rules the East Louisiana Railroad had at that

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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.

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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.

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Plessy vs Ferguson : A Landmark case While I was researching the Plessy Vs Ferguson case I found many interesting facts. Plessy's life before the case was an average life he had many jobs . He worked as a shoemaker ,an insurance agent and clerk ,and he stepped onto the stage of history in June 1892 (Cassimere). One major problem he had in life was his race, he was considered to be Plessy was an “octoroon”—a person who had one black great-grandparent (Cassimere).

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Plessy v. Ferguson Case The Plessy v. Ferguson case is often looked at as one of the most well-known cases to make it to the U.S. Supreme Court. This case took place in 1896 and received much attention from both the black and white press, and was mainly accountable for the spread of segregation in the United States. In 1890, Louisiana passed a law that required blacks and whites to be separated on railroad cars.

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Plessy v. Ferguson This case dates back in to 1982 when Homer Please was arrested for sitting in a “white” car of a train (Wormser, n.d.). Obviously this goes back where discrimination against black was going on. Plessy was said to pass as white due to his light skin; however, due to Louisiana law he was required to sit in the “colored” car. He was a “Creole of Color” which is used to refer to a black person in New Orleans whose ancestor were traced to the French, Spanish, and Caribbean (Wormser, n.d.).

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Allison Krug English II Ms. Cuddihy January 24th, 2015 Plessy vs. Ferguson It might be hard to imagine but in 1896 people who sat in the wrong part of the passenger train were fined and/or jailed. Plessy vs. Ferguson helped pave the way for many anti racial discrimination laws. This Supreme Court decision helped to uphold the Statue of Louisiana acts of 1890, which required passenger trains to provide “separate but equal” accommodations for whites and colored races on its railroads which changed the rights to make separate facilities for both races to be constitutional as long as they were equal. This truly changed the Civil Rights Era forever.

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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

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In 1892, Homer Plessy was riding on a train in Louisiana. He sat down in the car reserved for white passengers and refused to move when asked by the conductor. He was arrested and went to court, where he was convicted based on the 1890 Louisiana law stating that railway segregation was legal as long as both cars were equal. He appealed to the state supreme court, who affirmed the decision of the trial court, and it was brought to the Supreme Court. They ruled in an overwhelming 7-1 decision that as long as the cars were equal, segregation was legal.

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The south raging about segregation and “separate but equal” slogan used to make the segregated group feel as if there is no wrong doing, or no violations of their civil rights. All of the controversy started over the railroad cars that existed before segregation was brought to the forefront. Meanwhile, in New Orleans there was a case pushing for a challenge, known as Plessy v. Ferguson. Homer Plessy, an African American man, refused to move from a white only car to a colored car. In all disappointment the case was rule eight to one in Supreme Court.

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When Homer Adolph Plessy, who was one-eighth black, tested this law by taking a seat in the white-only section of a Louisiana Railway train, he was arrested. Plessy contended that the segregation law violated his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment (Newton, 2006). The case was appealed up to the U.S., Supreme Court in 1896. The Court ruled in a 7 – 1 vote upholding the Louisiana Statute, although associate justice John Marshall Harlan wrote a dissenting opinion. In his dissent, he wrote that “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens…

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Have you ever thought or heard about Plessy v. Ferguson or Brown v. Board of Education? Well these were two major Supreme Court cases that involved discrimination. Discrimination has been going on for a long time and still to this day. Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education are similar in cases because they both involve discrimination. The Plessy v. Ferguson began when there was an act know as The Separate Car Act.

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