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The Sherman Antitrust Act: Plessy V. Ferguson

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Entry 1: The Sherman Antitrust Act: The Sherman Antitrust Act was passed by Congress in 1890. The Sherman Antitrust Act was the first measure put in place to allow free trade without any restrictions, and prohibited trusts in order to end them. This act gave Congress the right to regulate interstate commerce. Any restriction on free trade was marked as illegal and could result in fines and jail time. The Sherman Antitrust Act was basically a shield to protect people from the restriction of big corporations; in addition, this act had an immediate, threatening impact on the dominate businesses in the economy. The Standard Oil Company owned by John D. Rockefeller had a huge restriction on trade, resulting in violation of the Sherman Antitrust …show more content…

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. 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 …show more content…

Oregon was a court case that changed the lives of the working class women in 1908. This court case stated that the long hours of labor is dangerous for women because of their lack in physical strength and endurance. Women had to be treated differently from men because they are the ones that bear children; therefore, the working conditions need to be safer for women. I believe the Supreme Court saw this as an opportunity to keep the future of their society and the United States safe from the harmful effects of working in hazardous places. Overworking of the women was also a concern, so the Supreme Court also set a maximum amount of hours a woman can work. A correlation was made where an overworked, tired mother would not support a healthy, vigorous baby. Even though the laws set in place a number of benefits for the women, a number of these women saw it as a suppression of their

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Chapter II: Review of Literature Antitrust Laws      The antitrust law began when the United States Congress passed the very first antitrust laws in 1890. These laws were called the Sherman Act. The Sherman Act was a “comprehensive character of economic liberty aimed at preserving free and unfettered competition as a rule of trade.” These Laws existed for many years.

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The Sherman Anti-trust Law was enacted in order to impose regulations on the booming industrial companies of the late 1800’s. It was very easy at the time for people of the same profession to band together or merge companies to create situations in which they could all maximize profit to the detriment of the average consumer. The Sherman law made conspiracies, monopolies and contracts illegal. One such contract is known as a trust, such as the one represented by the Maricopa County Medical Society. The Medical Society consists of over 70 percent of the doctor in our county and they decided that it would not be in violation of anti-trust laws to fix a price-ceiling.

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Garfield, the official of the Bureau of Corporations, started to examine Standard Oil for proof of infringement of antitrust law. He provided Attorney General George Wickersham with his discoveries, and charges were gotten against Standard Missouri. In 1909, Jersey Standard was discovered liable of disregarding the Sherman Act by setting up a holding organization and for limiting rivalry by means of the settling of supply costs, transportation rates, and yield costs.the primary principal antitrust regulation was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which emerged in large part from public dissatisfaction with the monopoly power gained by way of general Oil in the oil refining marketplace. The Sherman Act prohibits conspiracies or mixtures in restraint of trade (segment 1), and any tries to create them, called monopolization (section 2). the boundaries of the law regarding what constitute unlawful practices were no longer exactly described, main to extraordinary judicial interpretations of the act.

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John H. Ferguson was the judge on the case and decided to uphold the state law. The law was challenged in the supreme court on grounds that it conflicted with the the 13th and the 14th amendments. By a seven to one majority vote, the controversial “separate but equal” doctrine. It was the the seminal post-Reconstruction Supreme court decision that judicially validated state sponsored segregation in public facilities. In a misguided decision, the court ruled that blacks and whites could be separated in public life if the accommodations were equal.

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Plessy vs. Ferguson was a case that attempted to prove that the Jim Crow lawintervened with the fourteenth amendment in May 18, 1896. To give you a brief description about the Fourteenth Amendment, The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868 in the US Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment broad goal was to ensure that the Civil Rights Act passed in 1866 would remain valid ensuring that "all persons born in the United States..." people that are born in the United States of America are given citizenship. Also, born citizenship provides "full and equal benefit of all laws."

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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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Samuel Dodd created an idea in 1882, all owners must combine their operation to give to a board of nine trustees, and in return they promised to share for the new organization. Managed by Rockefeller, the board of trustees control the companies into a trust. Laws like the Sherman Anti-trust Act, which said no combinations of companies that restrained interstate trade or commerce, banned this; however the federal government hardly enforced

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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” written in 1896 by Mr. Justice Brown grotesquely discriminated against people of color and attempted to justify it using the 14th Amendment as a loophole for blatant racism. The document was written following the civil war in the southern state of Louisiana. The southern United States still had a rather old fashioned way of thinking towards equality and was not happy with the outcome of the Civil War years after its settlements. Racism against people of color was still heavily favored because they were still viewed as inhumane, and unworthy of equal treatment. The essential basis of the document “Plessy v. Ferguson” reinstates laws concerning the accommodations of railways for “colored people” and whites.

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Ferguson case of 1896. According to McBride (2006) “segregated public facilities were constitution so long as the black and white facilities were equal to each other.” This made “separate but equal” constitutional. Oliver Brown claimed that the city’s black and white schools were not equal to each other and never would be. Brown was able to get the public’s help when other parents of African Americans joined the cause.

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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

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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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The 14th amendment was not in conflict because that deals with someone being deprived of life, liberty, or property and equal protection in laws. Plessy was not deprived of life, liberty or property because it was a state law that separation was necessary constitutional. Touching on the fact that Plessy is 7/8 Caucasian Mr. Justice Brown states, “It is up to the state, some holding that any visible admixture of black blood stamps the person as belonging to the colored race, others that it depends upon the preponderance of blood, and still others that the predominance of white blood must only be in the proportion of three fourths.” After this court decision it enabled the foundation for Jim Crow laws to be put in place and stay there till mid

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Then, in 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act was set forth. This act was a federal law that prohibited monopolies. The Sherman Antitrust Act made any combination or trust in restraint of trade illegal. (Class notes, industrial reform evidence) There were many different types of social problems during this time period.

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