What Is The Plessy Vs Ferguson Case

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The court case that I was assigned to was the Plessy vs. Ferguson case. The case was about how Louisiana made a law that had separate train cars for blacks and whites. Plessy was only 1/8ths black and 7/8th white and he got arrested on June 7th, 1892 for violating the separate car act of 1890. Plessy refused to sit on the African American train because he looks white but was classified as African American. Plessy then sued John Ferguson for the 14th amendment and separate but equal. Being separate but equal means that the blacks and whites had to have the same privileges like going to school but they could not use the same facilities and if they did than it would things such as different water founds and different bathrooms. The 14th amendment states, All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside, which basically means to treat all citizens equally. After Plessy sued Ferguson, he lost his court case and decided to appeal it and it made it to the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court made a 7-1 ruling decision that the Louisiana law was about races being separate did not oppose the 13th and 14th amendments with Plessy losing. The court decided that they could keep a separate but equal doctrine and that facilities on trains were constitutional. The one out of seven people, John Marshall Harlan, disagreed with the ruling and argued that separating races from facilities made inequality. Justice Henry Brown made the court’s decision and upheld Louisiana’s law requiring segregation. Brown states that the law did not violate neither the 13th or 14th amendments. He said that the 13th amendment was only towards slavery and t... ... middle of paper ... ...e equal who care if there is segregation or not. A lot of people back then would have supported that decision just like the supreme courts vote did. Nowadays most people would disagree with the decision. Yeah both races had their own facilities and they were separate but definitely unequal. They had the white’s facilities more clean and nice looking while on the other hand they had all the African Americans facilities dirty. If they wanted equality from the start they should have made everything look the same and have no entrances for white or for blacks or no sides, or trains. Everyone should n=be able to be free and go whichever or whatever way they choose to go. I would have disagreed with the court’s ruling as well because no one should be lower ranked than anybody else. Everyone could have been integrated a long time ago if the court made a decision earlier.

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