The Civil Rights Movement: Plessy Vs. Ferguson

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.

Homer Plessy was only one eighth African descent and appeared to be white. Despite his white features, he was arrested for sitting in a white car and refusing to leave the white railroad car. The case went first to the Criminal District Court of the Parish of Orleans in State of Louisiana v. Plessy in

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

One of the most historic cases in Supreme Court history is the Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896. Plessy v. Ferguson was a trial that ruled segregation as legal, as long as separate, equal facilities were provided for both races. After the Reconstruction era had dispersed, the Jim Crow laws appeared. The Separate Car Act was one of the Jim Crow laws enacted upon by the Louisiana State Legislature. This law stated that blacks and 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

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

Secondly, the Jim Crow laws enforced the demarcation of public facilities due to race, usually to the disadvantage of blacks. Everything, including drinking fountains, restaurants, schools, hospitals, prisons, trains, and buses were color-coded, and failure to comply with the decree usually resulted in arrest, notably more often for blacks than whites. The Jim Crow laws advertised the partition of buildings as “separate but equal”, but considering the fact that blacks were considered inferior at that time in the south and that previous race-related laws stood against blacks, the majority of the buildings made for whites were of noticeably higher quality than the ones made for blacks. Either that, or there were no colored facilities in the area, again leading to limitations for the African American race. Despite this, when Louisiana passed the “Separate Car Law”, which stated that blacks and whites had to sit in different train cars, Homer Plessy, a fairly light-skinned, black man, chose to defy the law by sitting in a white train car. After refusing the conductor’s requests to sit in the designated car, Plessy was arrested for contravening the Separate Car Law. A day

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;

Numerous grand triumphs had been won for blacks especially with the section of the thirteenth and fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution—"flexibility" was no longer only a fantasy after over 250 years of pitiless, sub-human treatment persisted under subjection arrived at an end when the 13th Amendment abrogated bondage. Furthermore, the fourteenth Amendment now promised them level with insurance and due process under the law. However the harm delivered by the Plessy versus Ferguson case which sanctioned the "different however equivalent" teaching, added fuel to an officially seething flame of isolation, exacerbating an awful circumstance just at this point guaranteeing and supporting the continuation of the racial domination and dark inadequacy

The Civil Rights Movement was an era in time where nonviolent protests shook the core of the South’s Jim Crow laws in the 1950’s and 1960’s. African Americans and a few white people were fighting for equal rights since the beginning of the Reconstruction Era. The main objective during the Civil Rights Movement was to dismantle racial segregation in public places and to stop discrimination against African Americans. African Americans were fed up with being denied their rights as American citizens, mistreatment was heavily practiced in the South through their laws and legal actions. The Civil Rights movement was completely necessary because it challenged laws made to enforce segregation and also for the nation to face the ill treatment of African Americans.

In the Plessy v. Ferguson case, the statute of Louisiana, acts of 1890, c. 111 requires train companies to provide separate but equal usage for colored and white races. Plessy was a resident in the state of Louisiana which he was of mixed race as he was seven eighths caucasian and one eighth black. He tried to use the whites only train section and was arrested. Plessy then sued Louisiana State Supreme Justice, the Hon. John H. Ferguson for violating his 13th Amendment which prevents slavery and his 14th Amendment which is equal protection under US laws. (“Plessy v. Ferguson”, 1).

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, the Supreme Court ruled that the law could not be applied to interstate travel

In 1892, a man named Homer Plessy was arrested for violating the Separate Car Act, which had been put in place two years prior to the incident. According to StreetLaw.org, the Separate Car Act claimed that “all rail companies carrying passengers in Louisiana must provide separate but equal accommodations for white and non-white passengers.” The penalty for disobeying the Act was a twenty five dollar fine or twenty days in jail. Unfortunately for Mr. Plessy, he was one eighth black and purchased a first class ticket to sit in the car dedicated to white people. Once arrested, Plessy argued that the act violated both his thirteenth and fourteenth amendment rights and decided to take the matter to court. Plessy lost his case in two minor courts before he brought the issue to the Supreme