Separate But Equal Doctrine

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 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.

Since the creation of our country, African Americans have dealt with prejudice. They have faced many challenges and obstacles, such as segregation. After all of the slaves were emancipated, most public facilities participated in the separation of colored and white people. One of the facilities that was segregated, included the bus system. African Americans had to sit in the back of the bus and, when necessary, had to give up their seat to any white bus rider. Document 1 and 4 show the segregation in schools, which invigorated children and parents, because this made many African Americans students feel inferior. The conclusion of “separate but equal” did not seem to be working in the education system. Restaurants were also segregated. White males and females were given much better service, and restaurants were often separated. Another way African Americans faced inequality, was through the denial of constitutional rights. In many instances, African Americans guaranteed rights were taken away from them. For example the 14th Amendment was violated, which guarantees equal protection of the law and it forbids any state from making laws that

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.

Segregation had been something the United States had struggled with for years. During the 1890’s segregation started to become more common and white people felt superior to other races, especially African Americans. White people believed, black people did not deserve the rights and respect that they had. Homer Plessy, the so called wrongdoer in the Plessy vs Ferguson case, was seven-eighths white and one-eighths black, and he had an appearance of a white man. On June 7, 1892, he purchased a railroad ticket from New Orleans to Covington La, and sat in an empty seat in a whites only car. Homer told the conductor he was black, and when asked to leave and move on to the appropriate car, he refused. He was an American citizen who had bought a first-class ticket and deserved to sit on that train. When the conductor called the police, Homer Plessy was arrested and later in court his case challenged the system and had a large impact on the African American community.The Plessy vs Ferguson trial affected humanity in both a positive and a negative way, because of the small negative short term cultural effects, such as disrespect towards African Americans, and the long term positive effects that lead to the equality between black and white people.

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

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

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.

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 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;

Laws and local customs requiring the separation of the races had numerous precedents. In 1896, in the landmark decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court gave its approval to state laws requiring separate facilities for blacks and whites. The case arose in Louisiana, where the legislature had required railroad companies to maintain a separate car or section for black passengers. A Citizens Committee of black residents of New Orleans came together to challenge the law. To create a test case, Homer Plessy, a light-skinned African-American, refused a conductor’s order to move to the “colored only” part of his railroad car and was arrested. The lone dissenter, John Marshall Harlan, reprimanded the majority with an oft-quoted comment: “Our constitution is color-blind.” Segregation, he insisted, sprang from whites’ conviction that they were the “dominant race” (a phrase used by the Court’s majority), and it violated the principle of equal liberty. To Harlan, freedom for the former slaves meant the right to participate fully and equally in American society. As Harlan predicted, states reacted to the Plessy decision by passing laws mandating racial segregation in every aspect of southern life, from schools to hospitals, waiting rooms, toilets, and

African Americans were granted full citizenship, by the Fourteenth Amendment, in the year of 1868; segregation did not end until almost a hundred years later, in 1964. The “separate but equal” doctrine allowed segregation as long as blacks and whites had equal facilities. During the time of “separate but equal” many debated whether this doctrine was constitutional or not. The monumental Supreme Court cases Plessy vs Ferguson and Brown vs Board of Education shaped America’s society by deciding the constitutionality of the “separate but equal” doctrine.

The duration of the Civil Rights movement lasting a little over a decade left a permanent mark in American history. In sum, slavery has been abolished for over a century, but African-Americans continue to be slaves to the nation’s society while being oppressed by the amount of inequality received since the 1800s. Segregation; a word used as an excuse to mistreat, divide and restrict those who were born and reside on this developing nation, of which we call, America has led the economy to believe that it is the norm to drink from divided drinking fountains, and use restrooms assigned for different colors of skin. The reason for that was “Separate but Equal” doctrine, a quick-fix solution used to mask inhumanity between blacks and whites. While not every Black person, Native American or Chinese student feels segregated, it oppresses Americans proving it in supreme court cases like, Plessy v. Ferguson Brown v. Board of Education Lau v. Nichols Shelley v. Kraemer and University of California v. Bakke , focusing on the

“Laundry is the only thing that should be separated by color”(Racism Quotes). The Supreme Court cases Plessy V. Ferguson and Brown V. Board of Education are two landmark cases that changed the course of America history. In the court case of Plessy V. Ferguson Homer Plessy broke the Louisiana Law by sitting in the Coaches instead of in the designated area for the African Americans(Supreme Court Plessy V. Ferguson). Plessy felt that this situation violated his Thirteenth or Fourteenth Amendment.Then in Brown V. Board of Education Oliver Brown took the fact that schools were being segregated to the courts because Brown felt that this violated the fourteenth Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment before we go any further is that slavery or being owned by someone with more power then you was illegal if it was involuntary. Everyone has the same rights

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).