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Summary Of The Plessy Vs. Ferguson Case

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Plessy v. Ferguson Case The Plessy v. Ferguson case is often looked at as one of the most well-known cases to make it to the U.S. Supreme Court. This case took place in 1896 and received much attention from both the black and white press, and was mainly accountable for the spread of segregation in the United States. In 1890, Louisiana passed a law that required blacks and whites to be separated on railroad cars. If there was only one passenger car in a train, the blacks and whites must be separated by a curtain or some other form of a barrier. This was called the Louisiana Separate Car Act. Not everyone was pleased with this new act. Many unhappy citizens in New Orleans created a group to try to abolish this law. Homer Plessy was a member …show more content…

Although he had one African-American grandparent, he did not consider himself black. Louisiana law defined him as an “octaroon”- one eighth African American. On June 7, 1892, he purchased a ticket on the East Louisiana Railway from New Orleans to Covington, and intentionally broke the law to establish a case. In result of Plessy’s decision to sit in the whites-only railway car, he was asked to move to the black railway car and he refused. Plessy was immediately arrested. He was held for trial and ordered to pay a twenty-five dollar fine. “He petitioned the Louisiana Supreme Court for a writ against Ferguson, the trial court judge, to stop the proceedings against him for criminal violation of the State law. But the Louisiana State Supreme Court refused.” (Pearson Education) Plessy, along with other members of the group, felt that this Louisiana law violated the Constitution of the United States, specifically the thirteenth amendment, prohibiting slavery, and …show more content…

The seven to one decision was in favor of the defendant, John H. Ferguson. The court did not agree with Tourgee’s argument about the thirteenth amendment. Also, the common opinion of the court was that the Louisiana law did not show that African-Americans were inferior. Justice Harlan, a former slave owner, disagreed with the common opinion of the court. He stated that the constitution is “color-blind and should not make such distinctions based on race, and that such distinctions did, indeed, imply the inferiority of one place to another.” (Kids.Net.Au) In January 1895, Homer Plessy pled guilty and paid the twenty-five dollar

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Homer Plessy was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black and agreed to test the constitution parts of the Separate Car Law. In 1892, Homer Plessy was arrested because he bought a ticket for a trip and sat down in an empty seat in a white-only train car. Hon. John H. Ferguson of the U.S. District Court dismissed Homer’s claims that his arrest was unconstitutional.

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Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (U.S. 1896) gave states the legal right to require persons of different races to use separate but equal segregated facilities. But that ruling was struck down in the landmark case of Brown v. Bd. of Educ. , 347 U.S. 483 (U.S. 1954), In that case the court held that separate but equal public schools based on race is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and is unconstitutional. In upholding that decision, Cooper v. Aaron held that state governments must comply with Supreme Court rulings and court orders based on the its interpretation of the

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Homer Plessy did not consider himself black, because he was born an octoroon. In others eyes, Homer Plessy was tinted with black in his blood. This is all the more reason why the Jim Crow law or Separate Car Act Law contradicted the fourteenth Amendment. No one can truly be separated and equal. If the Jim Crow law was plausible, then it will make no sense to arrest Homer Plessy.

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Plessy v. Ferguson The Supreme Court of Plessy v. Ferguson, argued on April 13, 1896, involved a man identified as Homer Adolph Plessy. Plessy was a man of seven - eighths Caucasian and one - eighths of African descent in the State of Louisiana who was denied to sit in a passenger train car reserved for “whites only.” The case questioned the Supreme Court whether Louisiana’s law mandating racial segregation infringes the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

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Some of his and Justice John Harlan's arguments, laid the groundwork for future actions against an oppressive government. Oliver Brown used many of the same arguments as Homer Plessy, such as stating that separate but equal doctrine was unconstitutional because it violated the plaintiffs 13th and 14th amendment rights. While these arguments were before unsuccessful in Plessy v. Ferguson, they were later successfully backed up by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, overruling the earlier set precedent. After the separate but equal precedent was over ruled, separate but equal school facilities were forced to be integrated. Long before this groundbreaking ruling, Justice John Harlan thought that the U.S. constitution should be “color-blind”, and his dreams were one step closer, though he was not there to see it.

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Plessy v Ferguson, 1892, a cornerstone in racial discrimination, dictated that public places, including railway cars, were considered separate but equal. This ushered in the Jim Crow laws that pushed the separate but equal laws at an alarming pace, causing further oppression for the African Americans. Between 1887 and 1950, nearly 5,000 African Americans were lynched all because of the color of their skin. The war may have been over for the states, but in the hearts of the black person, it had only just

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Plessy vs. Ferguson, one of the bigger cases in the turning point for rights, gave the black community a big boost forward. There was a man named Homer Adoph Plessy that had a problem with the way things were going at the time and he wanted equal rights. But there was another man named John Ferguson who thought that everything was just skippy. They went to court to settle their quarrel.

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In 1896, the Plessy v. Ferguson became of. The first reason, an incident in which African American passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for blacks. Then, he was brought before John Ferguson state law. Later, the Court then avoided discussion of the protection granted by the clause in the 14th Amendment. Also, It was a 7-1 vote but the argument was false because of the “assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority”.

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The decision of the Court was in favor of the state because of the already standing Louisiana laws. I do believe that Homer Plessy’s thirteenth and fourteenth amendments were violated even though the Court stated it was only a distinction of color and not of

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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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Even though the case of Plessy v Ferguson did not reach the Supreme Court until the year 1892, the real issue arose in 1890 when a Louisiana state statute was passed. This statue that was referred to as the Separate Car Act. The statue stated that rail companies carrying passengers in the state of Louisiana must

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Plessy v. Ferguson-The Plessy v. Ferguson trial initially began when the state of Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act in 1890 which made it legal to separate common train carriers. Homer Plessy (a Black man) purposely sat in the Whites- only section in 1892. Homer was shortly arrested and the Plessy v. Ferguson case began. Plessy v. Ferguson was the Supreme Court case that established the “Separate But Equal” laws in the United States in 1896. This decision set the standard that separate facilities (i.e. restrooms, public transportation etc.), for blacks and whites were in fact legal, as long as they were equal in accommodations.

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Legal Opinion of Overturning Plessy v Ferguson Sentence By: Estephanos Bekele Homer Plessy was an innocent man living in the state of Louisiana. He was a Creole, meaning that he was 7/8th white and only 1/8th black. Nevertheless, in the eyes of the law, he was considered African American. The SAA was the Separate Accommodations Act, created in 1890, for the state of Louisiana, was meant to force the blacks to sit in the back of trains, while whites were allowed to sit in the front of vehicles (Wikipedia Contributors).

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Plessy v. Ferguson, argued in 1896, stated that Homer Plessy violated the “Separate Car Act” when he sat in a “white” railway car. According to the government, this law still satisfied the pre-existing doctrine, “Separate But Equal” (Jim Crow Stories). The term “Separate but Equal” justified having separate facilities for different races, as long as both races had the same amount of amenities. According to the government, this did not contradict the 14th Amendment as both races were receiving “equal” access to what claimed to be “equal” services, though white facilities were often better kept than black ones. Plessy was arrested for refusing to get up from a seat reserved for white people, and over time, the controversial case made it to the Supreme Court (American History).

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In 1890, the state of Louisiana created an ordinance that required that railroads “provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races” (Course Reader 17). One African American, Homer Plessy, tested out the new law by sitting in a “whites only” portion of a train, and was promptly arrested. This spawned the now infamous Plessy v. Ferguson case. The decision that the Supreme Court held was that the state of Louisiana did not violate the 14th Amendment by establishing and enforcing a policy of racial segregation in its railway. The rationale behind this decision was that this separation will help the two races to come together on their own terms to reach social quality, rather than relying on legislation and the government.

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