ipl-logo

Louisiana State Law School Essay

821 Words4 Pages

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation does not constitute unlawful discrimination. Previously, the state of Louisiana had established a law that required separate railway cars for white and black people. Homer Adolph Plessy, who was seven-eighths white, took a seat in a "whites only" car of a Louisiana train. He refused to move to the car reserved for blacks and was arrested. The Supreme Court decided that Louisiana state law is within constitutional boundaries. The justices based their decision on the separate-but-equal doctrine, that separate facilities for blacks and whites did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment so long as they were equal. In 1935, the NAACP begins challenging segregation in …show more content…

The Court argued that the separate school would be inferior in a number of areas, including faculty, course variety, library facilities, legal writing opportunities, and overall prestige. The Court also found that the mere separation from the majority of law students harmed students' abilities to compete in the legal arena. Sipuel v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma in 1948, ruled students could not be denied entrance to a state law school solely because of race. Ada Lois Sipuel was denied admission to the University of Oklahoma law school because she was African American. Sipuel sued the school, alleging that because the state of Oklahoma did not provide a comparable facility for African American students under the doctrine of “separate but equal,” she would have to be admitted to the university. This was a landmark case litigated by the NAACP that helped to pave the road for Brown v. Board of Education. As seen in the film, Separate but Equal, Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP approached Brown v. Board of Education with a vastly different

Show More
Related
999 Words | 4 Pages

Brown vs. Board of Education This court case was about segregation. The appellants were Oliver Brown, Mrs. Richard Lawton, Mrs. Sadie Emmanuel, etc. The appellee was the Board of Education.

Read More
1394 Words | 6 Pages

According to the Supreme Court on May 18, 1896 in a 7 – 1 decision, the state of Louisiana was within its constitutional boundaries. The Supreme Court claimed that the state of Louisiana was within its constitutional rights because of an idea that would be called the separate but equal doctrine. The Supreme Court made it clear the segregation was not a violation of the fourteenth Amendment as long as both parties were treated “equally”. In the case of Plessy and the Separate Car Act, the Supreme Court states that if people of colour are provided their own train car of equal value to travel within, no constitutional rights are violated. In the eyes of the American Supreme Court, segregation was deemed acceptable if the people of colour were treated equally under the law and service.

Read More
1214 Words | 5 Pages

This case ordered that schools were supposed to begin integrating as soon as this was declared. Through this case, “Marshall and others challenged the idea of ‘separate but equal’ schools” (Tougas 16). On a legal level, Thurgood Marshall was able to change the situation for African Americans trying to get an education. His explanation against separate but equal caused the court to say “school segregation stripped African-American students of educational opportunities and harmed them emotionally” (Tougas 15). The Little Rock School Board already had a plan to bring black students into white students approved.

Read More
946 Words | 4 Pages

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,

Read More
999 Words | 4 Pages

Brown V. Board of Education was the consolidation of four separate cases pertaining to the segregation of race in public schools. The similarities in each, involve African American students being denied admittance into public schools attended by white children under a law that allows for schools to segregate students based solely on race. The plaintiffs, in this case, argued that such separation violates the students Fourteenth Amendment rights. However, they were denied relief based on the precedent set by Plessy v. Ferguson, in which a “separate but equal” doctrine was established stating that states participating in the segregation of races in public schools were constitutional as long as the facilities were

Read More
1701 Words | 7 Pages

However, it is important to go back to the end of the 19th century to discover where the separation of races and issues over African American rights truly began. The event and time being 1896 with the controversial court case of Plessy v. Ferguson. For those that do not know Plessy ruled in favor of “separate but equal” for the public facilities of white and black individuals. Not only did the ruling affect parks and restaurants but also, more importantly,

Read More
248 Words | 1 Pages

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…

Read More
525 Words | 3 Pages

Plessy v. Ferguson, a case challenging the law reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. Upholding the law, the court said that public facilities for blacks and whites could be “separate but equal.” Soon the South had to be separate according to the

Read More
842 Words | 4 Pages

In 1896, the Supreme Court had ruled in Plessy vs Ferguson that segregation was legal, as long as separate places for blacks and whites were "separate but equal." The Lawyers argued that the white and black schools in Topeka were not "separate but

Read More
456 Words | 2 Pages

In 1890, the separate car act required railroads to separate blacks and whites. Homer Plessy challenged the law by sitting in the whites only car and said that he was black, so he got charged. The judge did not agree with Plessy, the case decided that the Louisiana law was constitutional under the 14th amendment in the cars for african americans. The Plessy decision was “separate but equal” places, for whites and blacks were constitutional as long as they were equal. Even though blacks had a hard time with all the discrimination against them they still did not give up.

Read More
1322 Words | 6 Pages

In the court case Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896 ruled facilities are separate but equal and this remained under Jim Crow laws for the school system until 1954 when Linda brown was not allowed to attend a local elementary school because she was African-American. This case among others were taken to the Supreme Court and the “separate but equal” With the argument that segregated schools violated the fourteenth Amendment of the U.S constitution. Therefore, in 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in the Brown v. Board of Education that schools would not be segregated anymore. “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” (Brown v. Board of Education 1954) after this ruling there was no longer segregated schools.

Read More
707 Words | 3 Pages

The case Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court established a doctrine. " separate but equal. " This doctrine authorized segregation between the races. This occurred in 1892 incident in which an African American train passenger, Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car as a result breaking the Louisiana law.

Read More
615 Words | 3 Pages

The Court took Marshall’s argument (Marshall which was the head lawyer of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund) and exploited the doctrine of the “separate but equal” facilities for

Read More
882 Words | 4 Pages

Board of Education, such as the Briggs v. Elliott case that had been a main topic throughout the film “Separate But Equal”, the topic of segregation was ruled unconstitutional after they had over 50 years of Stare Decisis, or standing by a decision that had been previously decided, and fighting for equal rights that were supposed to come along with the whole “separate but equal” law that the supreme court had set in place back in 1896. While on the topic of separate but equal, the film with the same title discusses the issues that black people had faced with segregation. In the beginning of the movie, Reverend J. A. Delaine is tired of not being treated fairly, and seeing some of his students suffer due to unequal treatment, thus beginning one of the five Brown v. Board of Education cluster cases known as the Briggs v. Elliott case was a very important and influential part of the film due to the fact that not many, if any, racial cases throughout the state of South Carolina had been won. This film shed light on the fact that during the time of segregation, the 14th amendment “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.”, had been ignored by many people in the United States of America since they had decided to segregate the country.

Read More
720 Words | 3 Pages

In a case called Homer A. Plessy v. John H. Ferguson, the supreme court created what became known as the, “separate but equal” doctrine. It upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities and the legality of Jim Crow laws and other forms of racial discrimination as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality. Instead of providing separate but equal treatment for black and white Americans, the verdict just further perpetuated inferiority of blacks in America. Before Brown V. Board there was the case of Cumming v. Richmond Georgia County Board of Education in 1899 where the Court refused to issue an injunction preventing a school board from spending tax money on a white high school when the same school board voted to close down a black high school for financial reasons.

Read More

More about Louisiana State Law School Essay

Related Topics

Open Document