Is Plessy V. Ferguson An Important Case In The 1900's

The United States Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson was an extremely important case in the 1900’s. The case began in 1892 when an African American man refused to sit in a certain train car due to his ethnicity. This Supreme Court case upheld many doubts on the constitutionality of segregation. At the time of the ruling, the African Americans and the Caucasians were segregated in most public facilities, restaurants, and even public schools. A “separate but equal” doctrine became known for segregation being legal as long as the separate facilities were equal. The majority of the South was separated, but the African American facilities were very rarely considered equal as to the Caucasian facilities. The Louisiana state law stated that railroad cars were to be separated by race, and that if a train had more than two passenger cars, they were required to have designated seating for the opposite races. If the train only had one passenger car, they were to put up a curtain to separate the people of separate races. This law had a fine of twenty five dollars or up to twenty nights in jail for

Ferguson encouraged many states to regulate how the African American population was treated. Laws were put in place to enforce African Americans and Caucasians to be separated from nearly every section of society. This included public education, restrooms, hotels, public transportation, prisons, sports, hospitals, and sometimes even cemeteries. African Americans were denied the right to vote, and on some occasions they had a curfew. Birmingham, Alabama passed a law stating that the African Americans and the Caucasians could not play checkers together. No major protest on the national level happened following the Plessy v. Ferguson case. Segregation continued to be an issue in almost every corner of the country and it would continue to be this way for nearly sixty years. (Plessy v. Ferguson