Plessy v. Ferguson was a tremendously monumental case for its time. Nearly 30 years after the civil war and the end of slavery, segregation was the new racial problem. Schools, churches, hospitals, and even restaurants were being segregated. Homer Plessy, a man that was one-eighth black, decided to take action. His act of “civil disobedience” was refusing to leave his seat in the white portion of a segregated Louisiana train. Plessy was arrested and then tried before Judge Ferguson in a New Orleans court. Ferguson upheld the state law that legalized “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races” on trains (Plessy v. Ferguson- History). Plessy argued that this violated his 13th and 14th amendment rights and the case was taken to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1896, the Supreme Court decided in a 7-1 vote that the state-imposed segregation law was in fact constitutional and that it didn’t violate the equal protection laws of the 14th Amendment (Plessy v. Ferguson- Oyez). Justice Henry Billings Brown argued that the 14th amendment was only securing the legal equality of African Americans and not the social equality (Plessy v. Ferguson- Britanica) basically saying that “segregation does not in itself constitute unlawful discrimination” (Plessy v. Ferguson- Oyez).
…show more content…
Through separate but equal, almost every public place became highly segregated. At first it was just a social standard but the it became law in some areas. These laws were known as “Jim Crow Laws” (Jim Crow Laws and Racial Segregation). Marriage between blacks and whites was illegal in some states and in others it was “unlawful for a negro and a white person to play together or in company with each other in any game of cards or dice, dominoes or checkers” (Separate Is Not Equal). Some areas had signs made to say “Whites Only”, “Colored Waiting Room”, and in many places “No Colored