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Plessy V. Ferguson Case Summary

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Case Brief - Plessy v. Ferguson Homer A. Plessy v. John H. Ferguson was a US Supreme Court case between Homer Plessy, the plaintiff, and John Ferguson, the defendant. The year this case took was place was 18961. This case almost entirely deals with the Louisiana Law passed six years prior that provided “equal but separate” railway carriages for white and colored races. The constitutionality of this law was brought into this case as Homer Plessy, who refused to sit in the colored only rail car, argued it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This clause states that “All persons born in 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.” It then goes on to state that States are not allowed to make or enforce any law that takes away life, liberty, property, privileges, or immunities of US citizens without due process of law. The most important part of the clause though that is the most relevant is the final sentence which states “...nor deny to any person …show more content…

Plessy also tried to argue that the thirteenth amendment, which banned slavery, was also infringed upon in this case, but that notion was quickly dismissed by the court as the amendment only applied to the act of slavery itself. In Mr. Justice Brown’s opinion of the court, he specifically cites the court case of State v. Gibson as “technically interfering with the freedom of contract” due to its forbidding of interracial marriage, but the laws banning such a marriage have been recognized within the police power of the state. State

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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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1002 Words | 5 Pages

The petitioner of the case was Homer Plessy, and the respondent of the case was John H. Ferguson. The hearing began on April 13th, 1896, and came to a conclusion on May 18th, 1896. This case was one of the beginning cases for Separate but Equal, and is still remembered to this day. This case all started when Plessy, who was seven eighths white, sat down in the “white” train car and was asked to leave and sit in the “colored” train car.

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416 Words | 2 Pages

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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The Separate Car Act of 1890, allowed the separation of white and non-white passengers under the requirement that the separate train cars would remain “equal, but separate.” On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man, sat in a white-only train car as an act of protest that violated the Separate Car Act. Plessy’s protest has drawn attention to the divide between the treatment of Black citizens and the quality of their facilities. In light of the opposition to the Separate Car Act, Plessy brought the case to court arguing that the act was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court decided against Plessy 7-1, citing that the intention to make facilities equal made the law constitutional.

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95 Words | 1 Pages

An example of a Supreme Court overturning, would be Plessy vs Ferguson. States from the south had laws that had a disadvantage for black people. Plessy who is a light colored black, decided to sit on the white section of the train, and declared his ancestry a couple of minutes after. People demanded him to move, but he refused. He was arrested for not moving.

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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.

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The year of 1965 the black community let out a collective victory cry. They had finally gotten the rights they fought hard for. They could at last vote, go to school and college, and got the working condition they deserve. They couldn 't have done it without Martin Luther King Jr., but there were a slew of cases that were tried and further assisted in opening the black community 's opportunity pool. They were well known cases, like the Plessy vs. Ferguson, Brown vs. Board of Education, and the Regents of the University vs. Bakke, all very influential cases in the fight for rights.

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This case, which concerned racial segregation laws for public facilities such as restrooms, restaurants, and water fountains, made its way all the way to the Supreme Court. As way of background, in 1890 Louisiana passed a law which required blacks and whites to ride in separate train cars. However, in 1892, Homer A. Plessy, who was a black man, boarded a car designated for whites only. He was asked to leave, but refused and was arrested immediately. In the case, Plessy vs Ferguson, Plessy’s position was that his rights were violated under the 13th and 14th amendments of the Constitution, which dictated equal treatment under the law.

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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.

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Can separate really be equal? The landmark cases Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education show two sides of an argument that changes the way many people see things today. The Plessy v. Ferguson case set the precedent that segregation was legal when Homer Plessy was convicted for sitting in the white compartment of a train. The Brown v. Board of Education case tore down this precedent when it started the desegregation of schools after two girls had a dangerous walk to their all blacks school everyday. These two cases changed court precedents greatly, one setting a precedent, and the other tearing it down.

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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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Ferguson was a case of the Supreme Court in 1892 after passenger Homer Plessy traveled on the Louisiana railroad and refused to sit in a car for blacks only. Homer Plessy was brought before Judge John H. Ferguson to a Criminal Court in New Orleans to be trailed for refusing to follow the state law of Louisiana “separate but equal.” Such conflict challenged the violation of the 13th and 14th amendment where they ensure equality for recently emancipated slaves. They stated, “Separate facilities for blacks and whites satisfied the Fourteenth Amendment so long as they were equal.” “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 unsatisfactory to either.”

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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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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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