Plessy Vs Ferguson Essay

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.”

The hopes of this case were for much more than just the school system, the colored people wanted to get this case to the top to abolish separate but equal. With Brown's complaint, it had "the right plaintiff at the right time." The NAACP saw this as the perfect time to strike because the case really was a true showing of how separate but equal was just not what it claimed to be, Brown had no problem getting other black parents to join in on the case, and, in 1951, the NAACP requested an injunction that would forbid the segregation of Topeka's public schools.

The Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson is known for having established the precedent of “separate but equal.” The case originated in Louisiana and was specifically made to the separate passenger cars that were for the black and white races. The Supreme Court, in this case, upheld the right of Louisiana to separate the races and “this decision provided the legal foundation to justify many other actions by state and local governments to socially separate blacks and whites” (Zimmerman, 1997). It was not until the famous Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954 that the highest court in the land outlawed the principal of segregation and the concept of “separate but equal.”

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 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

The Plessey ruling truly embodied the overarching racial attitudes of the Southern United States in the Post-Reconstruction era. With the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments slavery had been abolished and Constitutional precedents were established that would seemingly pave the way for Americans of all races to begin to achieve equality. It is stated in the 14th that all citizens shall not have their basic civil rights infringed upon without due process of the law, and it is also stated that all citizens are guaranteed equal protection under the law. At first view, such measures should have eliminated official racist practices, yet racism prevalent throughout the United States and blacks were still considered to be inferior to whites. Many Americans, especially in the South, sought to continue current racist practices. Yet state segregation laws and other official racist practices needed a strong legal backing, and the Plessey decision provided exactly that. By establishing that segregation would be allowed if conditions were “separate but equal” whites throughout the country were given the precedent they needed to ensure blacks remained inferior. Although the decision claims that “equality”

In 1890 the Supreme Court made a law about keeping the whites and blacks in separate areas. This lead to the case Plessy v. Ferguson, this was a law that was made in Louisiana for restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and other public places to serve African Americans in a separate area. This law happened in 1896 and the outcome of the case was ferguson

Board of Education was introduced in 1952 and decided on in 1954. This case came about when Linda Brown a young eight year old African American girl from Kentucky was denied the opportunity to attend a school close to her home because, of her race. The case was taken to the supreme court where the decision to integrate individuals of the African American race into white schools was made. The decision from the court was unanimously in favor of the case. This case overruled the decision made in 1896 that allowed segregation within public spaces. Warren was put in charge of writing the decision of the court. While writing up the decision he mentioned that segregated schools did not follow the fourth amendment vying for equal protection, or the fifth amendment which vies for due

Through the monumental court case “Plessy v. Ferguson” of 1896 initiated the establishment of the fourteenth amendment which upheld state racial segregation laws for public facilities under the doctrine of “separate but equal.” However this doctrine did not stand for long thus, “on May 31, 1955, Warren read the Court's unanimous decision, instructing the states to begin desegregation plans “with all deliberate speed. ”(Documents) Without the document having the ability to be tweaked, life for black people in America would be even worse than it already

A chiefly odious ruling was written in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Argued before the Court in 1896 and ultimately overruled by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the Court, heard the case of a man named Plessy. One-eighths black, Plessy boarded a white-only car only which resulted in his arrest and jailing for violating of discriminatory segregationist statutes. The Court, under Justice Henry Billings Brown’s majority opinion, affirmed these segregationist policies establishing the infamous ‘separate but equal’ doctrine. As history would prove, the accommodations made for nonwhite Americans in many cases failed to even approach the threshold of equal. Plessy v. Ferguson stands in direct conflict with the promise of “equal justice under law”. With such a narrow interpretation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, which in part provided for equal protection under law, the Court yielded great deference to a harsh sociopolitical environment, ultimately sanctioning the segregation that would defile the American dream for many years, until Brown v. Board. The only dissenter in this case, Chief Justice John Harlan’s now-canonic phrase “our Constitution is color-blind,” (Hutchison, 427) reminds us that, contrary to the idea of the majority in this

However, Oliver Brown, the parent of a black student denied access to Topeka 's white schools, filed a class action lawsuit against the Topeka, Kansas school, turning the tables against racial discrimination. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the racial segregation of public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Despite how this decision put the Constitution on the side of racial equality and sparked the civil rights movement into a full revolution, the process of ridding one of the nation’s most inhumane habits did not finalize in this court case and continued to dwell into the late 1900s.

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;

In 1953, five cases against segregation in schools reached the Supreme Court. These involved the education policies of Kansas, Virginia, Delaware, Washington DC, and South Carolina (“Education and Civil Rights”). These series of court cases led to one of the most famous civil rights decisions of the 1950’s, Brown v the Board of Education. Reverend Oliver Brown lived in Topeka, Kansas, and had an eight-year-old daughter who had to travel twenty-one blocks to get to her school even though there was one just seven blocks from her home (“Education and Civil Rights”). The school closest to her was for white children only and unquestionably superior to the one she attended. This was not "separate but equal," it was separate and unequal. The head of the Supreme Court at this time was the liberal Earl Warren

This was until the Oliver Brown case; Oliver Brown had enough of sending his daughter an unnecessary distance to attend a Black School, when there was a White School nearby. He decided to take his case to the Supreme Court, with the help of his Black lawyer, Thurgood Marshall and the added support of the NAACP group, his case was a success. The fact that his case was lead by a black lawyer was unusual making the success even more celebratory. In 1954, segregated schools were declared to be illegal by the Supreme Court. With the new Supreme Court ruling many states gradually integrated their schools, giving Black Americans a better chance at a substantial education.

Her father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white elementary school but was rejected by the principal of the school. Angered by this, Mr. Brown sought help from the local NAACP chapter. The NAACP did just that and in 1951, they requested an injunction that would forbid the segregation of Topeka's public schools.