Plessy Vs. Ferguson Case Study

In order to show how the “separate but equal” doctrine came to be, as a class we created a mock trial of the Plessy v. Ferguson case. The idea of separate but equal allowed states to segregate black and white people through public services and accommodations for over 60 years. Despite this idea of equality in the doctrine, many people took advantage of it, as it gave both black and white people an influence on whether they were inferior or superior.

Laws are enforced to provide our society with safety, boundaries, protection of rights, and overall justice. The United States Constitution and Bill of Rights were established years ago to reduce the tensions and conflicts of our newly founded nation. It sought out to accomplish this by providing justice through an equal voice for all citizens. However, this equal voice for justice more often times than not is squandered and diminished. Things such as race, religion, and culture often times blur the lines of the law and fair outcomes in a court. Individuals feel that their beliefs are more important than the protection of rights and the deliverance of law or the law itself cannot go outside of its limitations to provide justice. This is apparent in the court cases of Marbury v Madison, Plessy v Ferguson, and the book To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee. These cases clearly exemplify that the law does not always provide justice, although it endeavors to do so.

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.

The landmark case of Plessy v. Ferguson is a Constitutional case in which it had to be decided who the constitution meant when it said "all men are created equal." This case is very important to our constitution and to the people being governed by the constitution because it brought up issues that hadn't been discussed in the U.S before. This case shows the degree of federalism and how much the government paid attention to it. The amendments in the constitution do not apply to a simple race or ethnicity. Throughout history laws have been made and destroyed at the cost of colored people, in the Plessy v. Ferguson case it is shown that due to the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments all citizens have equal protection under the law. Plessy was denied his right, as well as other colored people because they belonged to different bathrooms, they belonged to different train cars and they belonged to different water fountains at this time in history, but Plessy'

The 1920’s, was a decade of change, when Americans owned cars, radios and other electronics for the first time. The cars brought great transportation and the need for new roads. The radio brought music and entertainment to all. Electronics became a wide phenomenon where it helped with things from transportation to cooking. The 1920’s was a new era which brought immense change to Americans but after WWI, the nation suffered with strikes and a targeted upon communists and foreigners. This was also the time of the red scare. The Red Scare had begun following the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917; a nationwide fear of communists, socialists and anarchists.

Plessy v. Ferguson This was a petition filed in the supreme court of Louisiana in 1896, by Homer Plessy, the plaintiff. He filed this petition against the Honorable John H. Ferguson, judge of The petitioner was a citizen of the United States and a descent meaning he had both white and African American ethnic backgrounds. Keep in mind that at this time Blacks were not considered equal to whites.

The Plessy v Ferguson case was a U.S. Supreme Case in 1896 that upheld the constitution of segregation. This case started when Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow Car therefore breaking a law in Louisiana in the year 1892. He had bought a first class ticket and then took his seat in a white-only car. Homer Plessy was arrested and imprisoned immediately. In the court Plessy argued that his Constitutional rights were violated, and he filed a petition against John H. Ferguson. Plessy argued that the segregation law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth and Thirteenth amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment keeps states from denying equal protection of the laws to every person and the Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery. The court denied Plessy’s petition and said that the Thirteenth Amendment only had to deal with slavery and nothing else.

Brown V. Board Education was one important because it ended school segregation. Most of the people who wanted this to happen were mostly people in school. Also is mostly the African American people who wanted this changed for their own good. Also there was this time this African American family sued a school because her daughter was not allowed to be teacher in a white public school.

1. Plessy v. Ferguson was decided after a period of time where African Americans were granted more rights and freedoms under the law. During Reconstruction (1865-1877), African Americans were allowed to hold public office and vote. Some areas of the South had African American communities that were economically sufficient. After reconstruction ended, the "white man's government" resumed upon the withdrawal of Northern troops and the assistance of the Freedmen's Bureau. Jim Crow laws were passed that placed African Americans in a second class citizenship. This "flip-flop" between no rights (slavery), Reconstruction era rights, and no rights again (Jim Crow) is justifiably frustrating.

C. Vann Woodward stated the Jim Crow laws did not come about immediately after the Plessy decision, but that it took some time. He stated, “In the early years of the twentieth century, it was becoming clear that the Negro would be effectively disfranchised throughout the South, … and that neither equality nor aspiration for equality in any department of life were for him “ (6-7). The Plessy decision was made in 1896, but it took some time before Americans chose to segregate every aspect of their lives from the African Americans. This shows that Plessy vs. Ferguson had no immediate impact on the lives of African Americans, but it was a strong factor in contributing to strongly favored Jim Crow laws in the South and

Looking back from the Civil War all the way up to the post- reconstructions,African Americans were dealing with a lot of issues. The Civil War started in April 12, 1861 when South Carolina, a confederate state, opened heavy fire at fort sumter to make the United States army to surrender. After the spike of the war, it continued on until May 9th, 1865 when Robert E. Lee, a confederate leader, surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, which was a union leader. But during the war until the the end of it, African Americans had an involvement on both sides of the war. When Abraham Lincoln shifted the value from uniting all the states to fighting for the freedom of slaves, this caused many slaves to flee their masters and join the union soldiers to ensure

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

In the twentieth century, racial discrimination of education in south became a serious issue. Despite the supreme court ruled that all colored accommodations for people of different race may be separate but should be equal in Plessy v. Ferguson case, schools for black students were never as well supplied or well funded as those for white students. Without a quality education, black children would less likely go on a successful careers and most of them remained in low-paying jobs. In order to change the situation, many civil rights activists protested that school integration must happen for black children’s future. Among all of the civil rights activist fighting for blacks education equality, Daisy Bates, a pioneer for the racial equality in

However, this is not the case because America is supposed to be free for all, and allow everyone to live equally. Even though many of the whites believed that African Americans should not be in the workforce with them, the laws did not help. The Jim Crow laws only angered more African Americans because they were supposed to be free, especially after slavery ended in 1865. African Americans fought to end these laws by taking risky actions such as drinking from ‘Whites only’ water fountains, or using ‘Whites only’ restrooms. In addition, some whites were willing to participate in the fight of freedom for African Americans. Helping African Americans, or going against the Jim Crow laws, led to serious punishments like jail for life, or even death by lynching. According to the NACCP’s lynching records, 4,743 lynching’s occurred in the United States during this time. Of the 4,743, 72.7%, or 3,446, were black, and 27.3%, or 1,297, were white (NAACP.org). This was a problem because white people did not know who to kill first, or hate more. This eventually led to events that ended the Jim Crow laws. The main event that ended the laws was Homer Plessy v. Jim Crow. Homer Plessy was an African American man who purchased a first class ticket on a train, and the conductor told him that he could not be in the first class section. Plessy refused to move because he was an American citizen. He was arrested, and his case was taken to the Supreme Court. Sure enough, the court

The case involving Homer Plessy, who was brought before Judge John H. Ferguson of the Criminal Court in New Orleans originated in 1892 as a challenge to Louisiana’s Separate Car Act of 1890. The law required that all railroads operating in the state of Louisiana provide equal but separate accommodations for white and African American passengers and prohibited passengers from entering accommodations other than those to which they had been assigned on the basis of their race. It banned whites from sitting in the black cars and blacks in white cars and penalized employees for violating its terms, with the exception of nurses caring children of the other race. However there was an exception to this law that the law could not be applied to interstate travel (Duignan).