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Supreme Court Case: Plessy Vs. Ferguson

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The Supreme Court’s decision amalgamated with the Reconstruction-era differentiation between civil rights and social rights in the preceding court case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Conforming to Justice Henry Brown, the Fourteenth Amendment endorsed “absolute equality of the two races before the law, but, 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.” Congress could require the separation of the races as Brown communicated the reasoning of the laws not implying the inferiority towards either race. Plessy’s lawyer, Albion Tourgee, exhorted that the segregation regulations implied the white supremacy’s view of African American was seen as inferior. …show more content…

In spite of the fact that Plessy v. Ferguson was not incorporated with the segregation in public school system, it was understood that the Supreme Court had approved the legislation of Jim Crow system that involved segregated schools. In the case, Justice Brown utilize the segregation of school to emphasize his argument and demonstration of the system not correlating to the suggestion of abasement. Plessy v. Ferguson deduced to the “separate but equal doctrine,” where segregated facilities were substantiated by the Constitution and in equal conditions. The following of five justices designated to erode the Jim Crow system and using the courts to ignite their

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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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Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908. In 1930 he states for to the University of Maryland Law School but was denied because of him being black. However years later when he applied to Howard University when he graduated, he opens up a small law practice in Baltimore. Marshall won the first Major case in civil rights was due to the precedent of Plessy v Ferguson where it states racial segregation laws for public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal", where he sued University of Maryland Law School to admit a young African American named Donald Gaines Murray. With his well-known skills as a lawyer and his passion for the civil rights Marshall because the chief of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,

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Notаbly absent from the opinion, as it was in Plessy, is any citаtion to a Supreme Court cаse that considered whether the prаctice of segregating schools was a violation of the Fourteenth Аmendment. It was an open question for the Court. The Court аdmitted that the precedent to which it cited involved discriminаtion between whites and blacks rаther thаn other rаces. However, the Court found no аppreciable difference here—"the decision is within the discretion of the state in regulating its public schools, and does not conflict with the Fourteenth Аmendment."

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Homer Plessy was a brave man willing to stand up against southern Jim Crow laws, and that is fate in the Supreme Court is unfair. The Separate Car Act dictates that separate races must sit in separate cars, which is segregatory, and passed by the state of Louisiana. This is in direct violation of the 14th, and rightfully deserved to be challenged. African Americans everywhere should be able to use their rights earned by four long years of bloodshed, and not be dampened by the courts. But the court overlooked the fact that it was an state law, and not private policy, and deemed the segregation private and thus legal.

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The Court declined his argument. The Court determined that the segregated schools were considerably equal enough under the Plessy doctrine. It wasn 't until the mid twentieth century when Brown v Board of Education came into play that Plessy’s argument was given the okay by the constitution. The Court tried to use Plessy v. Ferguson to deny the argument that Oliver Brown was giving during the Brown v. Board of Education case. Once the Courts decided that separating children by race could have an overall affect on the black children 's ability to learn.

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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.

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Speaking for the majority was Justice Henry Brown. He stated that “a statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races -- has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races.” (Wormser, n.d.). In addition, that the 14th amendment was to undoubtedly enforce the equality of the two races before the law, and that it could have not been intended to abolish distinctions base on color (Wormser, n.d.). This case law allowed for segregation as long as that everyone were treated

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The “Plessy V. Ferguson” case is a very important case in U.S. history and U.S. civil rights, as it legalized segregation for decades. Homer Plessy appeared to a white man living a Louisiana, but he was ⅛ black, which was considered black in Louisiana. When Plessy tried to board a “whites only” railroad car in protest of Louisiana's “Separate Car Act” that legally separated train cars, he was arrested when he refused to move to colored car on the train. Once the case went through both district and state courts, it moved up to the U.S. Supreme Court where Plessy and his attorney argued that the law ostracized the colored people from the white, which would be unconstitutional. This was known as the “Plessy V. Ferguson” case.

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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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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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The Plessy vs. Ferguson case resulted in allowing segregation of facilities and places by using the phrase “separate but equal”. After the case, blacks lost a lot of their freedoms and rights because the states passed many laws that made a difference between blacks and whites. These state laws were called Jim Crow laws. These laws segregated blacks and whites on many situations such as, hospitals, bathrooms, marrying the other race, and schools (Costly). As a result of this, most schools attended by blacks were inferior.

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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.

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The ruling thus lent high judicial support to racial and ethnic discrimination and led to wider spread of the segregation between Whites and Blacks in the Southern United States. The great oppressive consequence from this was discrimination against African American minority from the socio-political opportunity to share the same facilities with the mainstream Whites, which in most of the cases the separate facilities for African Americans were inferior to those for Whites in actuality. The doctrine of “separate but equal” hence encourages two-tiered pluralism in U.S. as it privileged the non-Hispanic Whites over other racial and ethnic minority

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883 Words | 4 Pages

Keeping African Americans segregated and not treating their condition’s equal led to a even more discrimination resulting in a lack of rights. In the 1896, Plessey vs Ferguson case, the Supreme Court stated that all facilities could be segregated, but they had to be equal. “Requiring railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in that state to provide equal, but separate accommodations for the white and [African Americans] races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train.” (Document F). This quote shows that the train compartments were required to be kept separate but equal.

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In 1891, a group of concerned young black men of New Orleans immediately formed the “Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law.” They raised money and engaged Albion W. Tourgée, a prominent Radical Republican author and politician, as their lawyer. The poeple involved in this case are the young concerned black men the us government and the states. On May 15, 1892, the Louisiana State Supreme Court decided in favor of the Pullman Company’s claim that the Separate Car Law was unconstitutional. The importance of this case is that In 1883, the Supreme Court finally ruled that the 14th Amendment did not give Congress authority to prevent discrimination by private individuals(Plessy v.

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