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Plessy Vs. Ferguson And Brown Versus Board Of Education

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Supreme Court Decisions Setting Precedent

Discrimination may not seen as big a problem today, but people had to fight for that problem, and court cases set precedents for today. The case of Plessy versus Ferguson and Brown versus Board of Education helped change the way we view discrimination today. The case of Plessy versus Ferguson decided that segregation was legal as long as everything was equal. But on the other hand, Brown versus Board of Education included separate but equal schools made African-American children feel inferior to the white children.
1896, Supreme Court heard the Plessy versus Ferguson case. It was a 7 to 1 decision. The decision was that separate but equal was legal as long as no discrimination was shown. They believed that "so long as separate facilities were actually qualitatively equal, the constitution did not prohibit segregation in the view of the majority of the court," as stated in the second …show more content…

These Supreme court cases are related because one case set precedents for the other. Plessy versus Ferguson stated that separate but equal was not violating the Constitution, and that whites and African Americans can sit in different train cars, and as long as they are equal it does not violate the constitution. Not much change happened after that Supreme Court case, whites went one way, and African-Americans with the other. But years later that changed. After the Brown versus Board of Education case, they realized that African American children probably felt inferior to the white, so they changed that precedent, and after that case, not wanting any race to feel inferior to anyone else.
In the end, people have fought in court to stop discrimination and segregation, and the way the United States, and the way people viewed different races have changed. The Supreme Court may change the way they see things, and precedent changes. The case of Plessy versus Ferguson and Brown versus Board of Education changed the way we see other races

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