Plessey vs. Ferguson (1896) Background Information: This case began in 1890’s in the state of Louisiana. Louisiana legislature passed a law requiring railroads to separate passengers on the basis of race. This was definitely a federal state case. The court made it very clear that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment provided no guarantee against private segregation. They asked for it to offer public segregation. Constitutional Issues: The constitutional issue of this case is that they would like the 14th amendment to offer public segregation. The arguments of this case revolved around the 13th and the Equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. It may violate Plessy’s “equal protection” under the law. Plessy argued that the segregated facilities violate the Equal Protection rights Clause. The Louisiana law violated the 14th amendment which proves that it is unconstitutional. The state of Louisiana argued that it is a right to each and every state to make rules to protect their state and their public safety. Segregated facilities reflected the public and society of Lo...
Throughout history, segregation has always been a part of United States history. This is showed through the relationships between the blacks and whites, the whites had a master-slave relationship and the blacks had a slave-master relationship. And this is also true after the civil war, when the blacks attained rights! Even though they had obtained rights the whites were always one step above them and lead superiority over them continuously. This is true in the Supreme court case “Plessy v. Ferguson”. The Court case ruled that blacks and whites had to have separate facilities and it was only constitutional if the facilities were equal. this means that they also constituted that this was not a violation of the 13th and 14th amendment because they weren 't considered slaves and had “equal” facilities even though they were separate. Even if the Supreme court case “Plessy v. Ferguson” set the precedent that separate but equal was correct, I would disagree with that precedent, because they interpreted
This case was brought to the Supreme Court with Plessey’s argument being that his 13th and 14th Amendments was being violated. But Louisiana argued that the 14th Amendment states that everyone is to be treated equally and that is exactly what happened. They said that the cars were separate but equal and that abided by the Constitution while keeping the Jim Crow laws. The Supreme Court decided that no law was violated and took the state’s side. The Court upheld Plessey’s conviction, and ruled that the 14th Amendment guarantees the right to “equal facilities,” not the “same facilities.” In this ruling, the Supreme Court created the principle of “separate but equal,”(“Judicial Review”,
Plessy v. Ferguson was the first major inquiry into the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection clause, which prohibits states from denying equal protection of the laws to any person within their jurisdictions. Although the majority opinion did not contain the phrase separate but equal, it gave constitutional sanction to laws designed to achieve racial segregation by means of separate and supposedly equal public facilities and services for African Americans and whites. It served as a controlling judicial precedent until it was overturned by the ...
While Jim Crow was blatantly incongruent with the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of the full benefits of citizenry, it was justified by the Plessy vs. Ferguson Case of 1896 in which the Supreme Court upheld Louisiana’s Separate Car Act, requiring racially segregated railroad facilities, under the condition that such facilities were equal. This “separate but equal” doctrine was quickly, and legally, applied t...
Because of the 13th and 14th Amendments freeing slaves and granting equal protection under the law grants Jon the same rights to ride the train as any other citizen. Santa Clara County v. Southern Public Railroad, Even though the case was not about the 14th Amendment, Justice Morrison Remick Waite made it so by arguing that corporations must comply with the 14th Amendment. Santa Clara County v. Southern Public Railroad, 118 U.S. 394 (1886). Plessy v. Ferguson, Homer Plessy sat in a whites-only train car, he was asked to move to the car reserved for blacks, because state law mandated segregation. The court held that segregation is not necessarily unlawful discrimination as long as the races are treated equally. The impact of Plessy was to relegate blacks to second-class citizenship. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). However, this is not equal
Segregation in itself is an issue of legality, but this case especially was an unfair One. When segregation was the law it was brought up in the courts because segregation itself may clash with the fourteenth amendment, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside" (Compton's 6). This amendment states that all people born or naturalized in the USA are citizens. This would mean that Blacks are citizens and have just as many rights as any other citizen, but white lawyers and court officials found ways around this. They said that being a citizen doesn't have anything to do with equal rights between different races (Tourolaw). "The judge at the trial was John Howard Ferguson, a lawyer from Massachusetts who had previously declared the Separate Car Act `unconstitutional on trains that traveled through several states'. In Plessy's case, however, he decided that the state could choose to regulate railroad companies that operated only within Louisiana" (Virtualscholar1 1).
Plessy v. Ferguson , a very important case of 1896 in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the legality of racial segregation. At the time of the ruling, segregation between blacks and whites already existed in most schools, restaurants, and other public facilities in the American South. In the Plessy decision, the Supreme Court ruled that such segregation did not violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. This amendment provides equal protection of the law to all U.S. citizens, regardless of race. The court ruled in Plessy that racial segregation was legal as long as the separate facilities for blacks and whites were “equal.”
Separate but Equal doctrine existed long before the Supreme Court accepted it into law, and on multiple occasions it arose as an issue before then. In 1865, southern states passed laws called “Black Codes,” which created restrictions on the freed African Americans in the South. This became the start of legal segregation as juries couldn’t have African Americans, public schools became segregated, and African Americans had restrictions on testifying against majorities. In 1887, Jim Crow Laws started to arise, and segregation becomes rooted into the way of life of southerners (“Timeline”). Then in 1890, Louisiana passed the “Separate Car Act.” This forced rail companies to provide separate rail cars for minorities and majorities. If a minority sat in the wrong car, it cost them $25 or 20 days in jail. Because of this, an enraged group of African American citizens had Homer Plessy, a man who only had one eighth African American heritage, purchase a ticket and sit in a “White only” c...
Ferguson trial was a court case about a black man by the name of Homer Adolph Plessy. He was arrested for refusing to not ride in the ‘colored’ railway coach. Plessy had enough of the segregation so he decided to sit up in the white coach. However, it didn’t go well for him and he was arrested. On February 23, 1869, the Louisiana legislature passed a law prohibiting segregation on public transportation. The Government used the term ‘separate but equal’ as an excuse for not letting the blacks sit up with the whites. The supreme court case of Plessy v. Ferguson upheld a ‘separate but equal’ doctrine. “Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation in places where they are liable to be brought into contract do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other. (Plessy v. Ferguson). So the blacks and white were now equal, but they couldn’t be together. The government said that the everything was equal when the school that the black children were in had old textbooks when the white school had new textbooks. The blacks and whites were separate but not so much
A majority of the judges in the court acclaimed that the policy did not violate either the thirteenth or fourteenth amendment, stating that the purpose of the 14th amendment was “to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law…. Laws … requiring their separation … do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race”. This ‘separate but equal’ belief was accepted in a number of American states, legalising segregation and promoting the separations of schools, as well as other public areas. By the court made the remaining general public remove any doubts that made the segregation seem racist though there were some that still understood that it was indeed
“Separate is not equal.” In the case of Plessey vs. Ferguson in 1896 the U.S. Supreme Court said racial segregation didn’t violate the Constitution, so racial segregation became legal. In 1954 the case of Oliver Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka this case proved that separate is not equal. Oliver Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka was revolutionary to the education system, because colored people and Caucasians had segregated schools. The Caucasians received a better education and the colored people argued that they were separate but not equal. This would pave the way for integrated schools and change the education system as we knew it.
States ratified Jim Crow laws to legally segregate whites from blacks and they created separate schools, facilities, parks, and other separated places. When Plessy was arrested, he petitioned the Louisiana Supreme Court against Ferguson in order “to stop the proceedings against him for criminal violation of the state law.” (Handout) Yet again, the Louisiana Supreme Court refused and he went to the Supreme Court of the United States. The arguments in this case involve the 13th Amendment, which took away slavery and the Equal Protection clause of the 14 Amendment, which “prohibits states from denying any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” When this went to the Supreme Court of the United States, Plessy was brought to court against Judge John H. Ferguson. (http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/equal_protection) Was a state law requiring separate accommodations a violation of equal protection? Should the St...
Louisiana passed a law that required segregation between different races is constitutional under the 14th Amendment, as long as the “separate but equal doctrine” is obliged between the different races. The Plessy v. Ferguson case claimed that segregation was legal, as long as equal facilities were provided for both races. The associate justices voted 7 to 1. The majority opinion was written by Henry B. Brown and the opinion was written by Justice John M. Harlan. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education case overturned the decision of the Plessy v. Ferguson case ruling.
The Citizens’ Committee recruited Homer Plessy to purposefully violate one of Louisiana’s segregation laws. Homer Plessy was arrested in New Orleans due to a violation of the “separate-car law”. He tried to appeal through the state courts to the Supreme Court but he lost. The “separate but equal” decision against him made consequences for civil rights throughout the United States (Homer Plessy). This allowed segregation anywhere in the United States as long as the facility provided for both races was “equal”. The Committee used this tactic in order to get rid of segregation laws in Louisiana.
In 1896 the government passed a law that legally allowed racial discrimination. Under the landmark court case name of “Plessy vs Ferguson”, this ruled that this sort of discrimination did not violate the 14th amendment of the Constitution, as long as the facilities were equal. However, these facilities were not equal in anyway. So the African America...