Racial Pregregation In America's Case : Plessy Vs. Ferguson Case

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.

In June 1892 Homer A. Plessy bought a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railroad and sat in the car designated for whites only. Plessy was of mixed African and European ancestry, and he looked white. Because the Citizens Committee wanted to challenge the segregation law in court, it alerted railroad officials that Plessy would be sitting in the whites only car, even though he was partly of African descent. Plessy was arrested and brought to court for arraignment before Judge John H. Ferguson of the U.S. District Court in Louisiana. Plessy then attempted to halt the trial by suing Ferguson on the grounds that the segregation law was unconstitutional.

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.”

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jim Crow Laws and Segregation during the trial of Plessy vs. Ferguson. Homer Plessy, the plaintiff, was considered a free white man, despite having a distant relative from Africa. He challenged segregation when he purchased a

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

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.

Supreme Court case upheld the constitutionality of segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. The Court ruled that a state law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between whites and blacks did not conflict with the 13th and14th Amendments. Restrictive legislation based on race continued following the Plessy decision, it was not overturned until Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954. The case came from Louisiana, which in 1890 adopted a law providing for “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races” on its railroads. In 1892, passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car. He was brought before Judge John H. Ferguson of the Criminal Court for 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

The next critical Supreme Court ruling on the issue of civil rights was in 1892 with the Plessy v. Ferguson case. Homer Adolph Plessy was a shoemaker from the state of Louisiana. Although Plessy was seven eighths white and only one eighth black. According to the law in Louisiana, he was still required to use the facilities designated as "colored". In an attempt to challenge the law, Plessy, with the support of civil rights activists, bought a ticket for the first class coach on the East Louisiana Rail Road. Plessy boarded and sat down in the first class coach. Just after the train departed the station the conductor confronted Plessy. The conductor asked him if he was black, Plessy told him he was and that he refused to leave the coach. The train was stopped; Plessy was arrested and formally charged at the fifth street police station.

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

Plessy V. Ferguson was a court case that took place in 1896 in New Orleans. This case was held due to an incident in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow Car where at the time in Louisiana, all colored people had to by law, which required separation of both whites and colored people. This action resulted in Plessy’s arrest in 1890. Even though Plessy argued that this violated his constitutional rights, the court ruled that a state law that “states merely a legal distinction “between those that are white and colored did not conflict with the 13th and 14th amendments. Restrictive legislation bases on race continued following the Plessy decision, its reasoning was not overturned until Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954.

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 1892, Homer Plessy, a man of 1/8th African descent, bought a first class ticket and boarded a train traveling within Louisiana. Upon discovery of his mixed heritage, the conductor ordered him to move to the designated colored car. He was arrested when he refused to move; a violation of The Separate Car Act which required separate but equal accommodations for African Americans and Whites on railroads. Thus began the fight against the idea of separate but equal.

In the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson the Supreme Court decided that having ”separate but equal” accommodations for Whites and Colored did not violate the 14th Amendment (Wolff, 1997). This allowed states to continue segregation as they saw fit. The Plessy v. Ferguson case was centered on the segregation of railroad cars but the final ruling supported that all “separate but equal” accommodations were allowed by the constitution and was therefore allowed in restaurants, busses, and even schools.

One of the cases against segregated rail travel was Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that "separate but equal" accommodations were constitutional. However, in 1952, the Supreme Court heard a number of school-segregation cases, including Brown v. Board of Topeka, Kansas. It decided unanimously in 1954 that segregation was unconstitutional, overthrowing the 1869 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that had set the "separate but equal" precedent.

After Plessy vs Ferguson in 1896, the installment of separate but equal laws became the standard in the United States. With the installment of these laws in the United States, all public services were supposed to be equal for both races. But these hardly regulated laws only highlighted the differences in service quality received between the races. The separate, secondary accommodations that were provided for blacks were not up to par to the services received by the whites. Separate but equal laws not only separated whites and blacks physically, but these laws made it possible for blacks and whites to coexist entirely separately. Inability to monitor these changes, resources and lack of black representation led to these issues going unsolved.