Before Plessy v. Ferguson, there were separate railway cars for white and colored people. Homer Plessy was convicted of sitting in a whites-only car. He had white parents, but since he had black ancestry he was considered black. He argued that the Louisiana’s Separate Car Act of 1890 violated the Thirteenth Amendment, which required all people to be treated equally under the law. Therefore, the Court upheld this act, however, Justice Henry Brown claims that the abolition of slavery did not prevent…
Plessy v. Ferguson In 1896 the Louisiana Supreme Court was challenged with a case that had the potential to tear apart racial segregation in our country. The central question that revolved around this court case was whether or not segregation amongst whites and blacks was still equal. The decision made by the court prolonged unnecessary social/racial inequality, oppression, hate, and violence in our country. The court’s ruling had immutable repercussions that greatly scarred our nation’s history…
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 separated 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…
After the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896, the statement of “separate but equal” was created, preventing African Americans from achieving equality. In 1951 in Topeka, Kansas, a girl named Linda Brown was forbidden from attending Summer Elementary school, which was the school closest to her home, due to the color of her skin and was instead forced to go to a school for African American children much farther away. With the help of the NAACP, the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People…
The Plessy v. Ferguson case brought to the light the deep racism that was boiling within the United States. The case stated that races were to be, “equal, but separated.” The separation, however, was not where every race had their own separation, but it was the separation between whites and those of colored races. Within this case, in which the case is named after were the opposing sides of Judge Ferguson and Plessy who was arguing to remove the Jim Crow Laws. The Jim Crow Laws were that of which…
802 The Evolving Stance of Segregation In Plessy v Ferguson the court ruled that segregation was constitutional so long as the provided separate facilities were equal. For the next fifty eight years, states created laws that supported their own policies of segregation. Known as Jim Crow Laws, these laws continued to discriminate against African Americans across nation. It was not until 1954 when the case Brown v Board of Education when the court reached a decision to overturn segregation and ruled…
Danielle Trefz HONR259N 12 April 2011 Plessy v. Ferguson In 1892, Homer Plessy, a man of 1/8th African descent, bought a first class ticket and boarded a train traveling within Louisiana. Upon discovery of his mixed heritage, the conductor ordered him to move to the designated colored car. He was arrested when he refused to move; a violation of The Separate Car Act which required separate but equal accommodations for African Americans and Whites on railroads. Thus began the fight against the…
secondary school or continue their studies further. During 1954, in Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court came to a critical decision that students would no longer have to be separated in school depending on race. This first dated back to a case entitled, Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which first allowed students to be separated by race. This short story caught my attention when given the assigned reading. I felt an instant connection to it considering that my father was faced with great difficulties while…
As a result of Plessy v. Ferguson, in1896, where the US Supreme Court upholds the “separate but equal doctrine,” (Day & Schiele, 2013) Dr. King had to attend an all-black college, Morehouse College. This was the same college where his father and grandfather attended making Dr. King the third generation in his family to attend college. Dr. King would graduate from Morehouse College in 1948 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology. As well as attending college, Dr. King also follows in his father’s…
In 1986, the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case established that there could be separate but equal facilities for blacks and whites, giving support to Jim Crow laws. The Supreme Court did not begin to reverse Plessy until the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case 58 years later, which established that segregating blacks and whites was unconstitutional and that separate could never be equal. After the period of reconstruction following the Civil War, many states in the south and…