How Did Homer Plessy Violate The Supreme Court In 1890

There was no clarification on what race would be considered white or what would be considered black. During this incident, “Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth African American, purchased a rail ticket for travel within Louisiana and took a seat in a car reserved for white passengers. (The state Supreme Court had ruled earlier that the law could not be applied to interstate travel.) After refusing to move to a car for African Americans, he was arrested and charged with violating the Separate Car Act.”(Duignan 2017). Judge Ferguson ruled that the separation was fair and did not violate the fourteenth amendment. The state Supreme Court also backed up this decision. The case was brought to the Supreme Court and "The law was challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that it conflicted with the 13th and 14th Amendments. By a 7-1 vote, the Court said that a state law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between the two races did not conflict with the 13th Amendment forbidding involuntary servitude, nor did it tend to reestablish such a condition." (History.com Staff 2009). This decision set the key precedent of Separate but Equal in the United States. Racial segregation kept growing.

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.”

African Americans were never treated the same as other Americans. One day a black man who looked white named Homer Plessy got sick of sitting in a Jim Crow car so he decided to purchase a first class ticket in the white’s only section on the train. Plessy told the conductor that he was 1/8 black and he refused to move from the car. Removed from the train Plessy was in jail overnight and was released on a 500 dollar bond. Homer Plessy protested that his 13th and his 14th amendments rights were violated. This case became known as Plessy v. Ferguson. This case upheld the constitutionality of segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine.

In 1896 the U.S. Supreme Court case upheld the constitution of segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case. This case examined one key issue, was it constitutional to make black people sit in separate cars from white people? In 1890, Homer Plessy broke the law in Louisiana, by sitting in the white people car and he was 1/8 black and 7/8 white. The state of Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which required railway companies to have "separate but equal." There was punishment for not following the law which if a person would sit in the wrong car they had to pay $25 fine or go to jail for 20 days. Plessy was asked to move, but he refused and was arrested. When he was sent to jail he argued that Separated car acts violated the 14th amendment. Plessy took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court and it was

On July 19, 1890, Louisiana passed an act that provided equal but separate accommodations for black and white American citizen. Homer Plessy, challenged the statute in 1896 declaring, since he was seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African blood, he was entailed to all of the same rights and privileges of the

In the case Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 took place during the era of Jim Crow laws which advocated for separate but equal laws. Plessy was presumed colored due to the one-eighth black factor under the Louisiana law. It was held that Plessy was guilty since the race-based Jim Crow laws, which were applied in his conviction, were not in violation of the Constitution as long as the State of Louisiana proffered the separate but equal treatment. However, in the ruling, one jury member chose to dissent by stating that the Constitution is color blind and thus could not allow for different treatment of classes of citizens based on skin color.

On June 7, 1892, the law was tested again, when Homer Adolph Plessey, an “octoroon”, a very fair person with white features, purchased a ticket and boarded the Louisiana railroad with the consent of the Citizens Committee with the express purpose of violating the Separate Car Act. He sat in the “whites- only section” and when his ticket was collected by the conductor, Homer Adolph Plessey informed the conductor that he was 7/8 white and was not going to sit in the “black-only car.” Arrested and jailed, Plessey as released on $500 bail the next day. A White New York lawyer, Albion Winegar Tourgee, was retained. Plessey’s case was heard one month later before John Howard Ferguson. Tourgee argued the violation of the 13th and 14th amendments before Justice Ferguson. Tourgee’s argument was for absolute equality of all races. However, on May 18, 1896, Justice Brown, by a vote of 7 to 1, ruled in favor of the State of Louisiana upholding the constitutionality of state laws under the doctrine of “separate but equal" that justified a system of

Plessey boarded a car of the East Louisiana Railroad that was designated by whites for use by white patrons only. Although Plessey was one-eighth black and seven-eighths white, under Louisiana state law he was classified as an African-American, and thus required to sit in the "colored" car. When Plessey refused to leave the white car and move to the colored car, he was arrested and jailed. The Court rejected Plessey's arguments based on the Thirteenth Amendment, seeing no way in which the Louisiana statute violated it. In addition, the majority of the Court rejected the view that the Louisiana law implied any inferiority of blacks, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead, it contended that the law separated the two races as a matter of public policy.

Homer Plessy was one eights black and under the Louisiana Law he was classified as black, therefore, he would have to ride in the black’s only car, even though normally with his pale skin color he could have ridden the white’s car only without anyone noticing. On June 7th, 1892 Plessy did just that he bought a first class ticket and boarded a whites-only car.

He sat in the white's section and purposely stated to the conducted that he was one eight African American. This was all a test backed up by the Citizen's Committee. The conductor told him to leave but Plessy refused. He was kicked off the train and jailed overnight. The bond to release him was $500. Plessy was protesting for the 13th and 14th amendment rights. He wanted to bring awareness to the fact that African Americans were not treated equally due to the color of their skin. Plessy pressed charges against the state of Louisiana for restricting and limiting the Equal Protection Clause which is under the 14th amendment. This implies that no state can limit the equal protection of laws to any individual. No African American should be denied any rights that a white person has. Ferguson countered Plessy's points by stating that each state has the right to make rules in order to maintain public safety. Keeping races from intermixing would lessen the violence for everyone. Judge Ferguson found Plessy guilty at the Louisiana state court. Plessy kept fighting and after bringing attention to the trial and suing Ferguson for a wrong interpretation of the case it made its way to the Supreme

The court case was during the time of racial tension, Jim Crow laws and fighting for equality. On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first class train ticket on the white train car, but he was supposed to sit on the colored train car. As a result, he broke the Separate Car Act of 1890. He appeared white and was only one-eighth African American, but he was still brought to court for sitting in the whites only train car. Plessy’s trial

The Plessy versus Ferguson case started with an incident where an African American passenger on a train, Homer Plessy, broke Louisiana law by refusing to sit in a Jim Crow car, a separate cart on the train where African Americans had to sit. This

Plessy V. John H. Ferguson dealing with the separation of black and white residents. In 1980 the state of Louisiana passed a law called “ The Separate Car Act” which mandated separate public accommodations for black and whites on railroads. On July 7, 1982 a man named Homer Plessy purchased a railroad ticket and boarded the “whites-only” section of the railroad. Plessy was immediately told to flee the “whites-only” area and enter “black-only” area. Plessy refused and was arrested for violating the Separate Car Act. Interesting enough, Homer Plessy was 7/8th European descent and 1/8th African descent but was considered black. Plessy was then placed into trial in which his lawyers argued the state denied him his rights under the fourteenth amendment which provided equal treatment under the law. Plessy lost every court in Louisiana before appealing to the Supreme Court. In a 7-1 decision, the court decided as long as facilities are equal, their separation satisfied the fourteenth amendment “Separate But Equal”. This was a huge milestone for black citizens in the United States although they later realized it didn’t seem as nice as it did on paper. This was was later overturned by Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al in the year 1965 and was mandated unconstitutional for the reason that black facilities weren’t equal compared to white

Louisiana had the “Separate Car Law” which stated that whites and blacks could not share the same car, anyone would did not follow this would be arrested. A group that went by the name of the Citizens Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law said this was against the 13th and 14th amendment and to test this they had a French free born named Homer Plessy, who had one-eighth African American blood, sit in the ‘whites only’ car. Upon the next stop, Plessy was in fact arrested. The case was taken to the Louisiana State Court where Judge John H. Ferguson found Plessy guilty for breaking the law, the state supreme court upheld the ruling. However, the case was repealed to the Supreme Court, where Plessy’s attorney argued that the law broke the 13th and 14th amendment.

In 1892, Homer Plessy was a passenger in a railroad and who refused to sit in a Jim Crow car. He brought before Judge John H. Ferguson of the Criminal Court from New Orleans, who upheld the state law. The law was challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that it conflicted with the 13th and 14th Amendments. Although, the Supreme Court had ruled in 1896, Plessy v Ferguson inculcated the “separate but equal” doctrine and passed laws entailing the segregation of races, arguing that Jim Crow laws were constitutional. The case was devastating for African Americans allowing the oppression of an entire race. The Supreme Court system in practice was separate and unequal;