The Case Plessy V Ferguson Essay

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.

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 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.”

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'

Plessy was found guilty in a court to of law against Justice John H. Ferguson residing, on the grounds that the law was a reasonable exercise of the states police powers based on custom, usage and tradition in the state. Plessy ended u filing a petition for writs of prohibition in the Supreme Court of Louisiana against Ferguson. Plessy stated that segregation stigmatized blacks and stamped them with a badge of inferiority. The court found for Ferguson and the Supreme Court granted the cert. This is one of the many events that paved the way for things like the civil rights movement.

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.

After the Separate Car Act of 1890 passed in the State of Louisiana which required separate railway cars for blacks and whites a man of mixed race who was seven eighths of European decent and of one eighth African descent purchased a first class ticket, and upon taking his seat was once asked to move to the black only car, then was arrested for violating the separate car act, Plessy’s side argued that the Seperate Car Act had violated his thirteenth and fourteenth amendment rights. Judge Ferguson found Plessy to be guilty, and the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld his decision with the intention that it was the rights of the state to regulate railroad companies within the state.

In Plessy v. Ferguson, (1896) 163 U.S. 537, 16 S. Ct. 1138, 41 L. Ed. 256 the courts ruled in favor of the Respondent, Ferguson, finding that since the trains accommodated black passenger’s with equal accommodations,

Ferguson ruled Plessy guilty for breaking the law. However this case was also moved on to the Supreme Court because it had concerns with amendments in the Constitution. Plessy’s attorney argued that this interfered with the 13th and 14th amendment of the constitution which protects against discrimination. While this looked like a legitimate reason, but Justice Henry Brown argued that this was not the case. For the amendment protected race and the segregations that were happening did not count as discrimination but was keeping the races separated while giving colored people the same accommodations such as housing and jobs. He even argued that race would always be separated because of the colors, this in a way felt there would never be true equality. In the end, eight out of the nine justices did not support the arguments made on Plessy’s half and still ruled him

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

7 out of 8 judges in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case said that segregation was constitutional. The Supreme Court Case between Homer Adolf Plessy and John Howard Ferguson. The object of the case was to try to decide whether or not segregation was constitutional. Mr. Plessy was 30 years old when the case started. He was the prosecutor in the case. The case was originally called “Plessy v. The State of Louisiana”. Homer Adolf Plessy was a determined man who worked hard at abolishing segregation base on your race and would do anything, including getting arrested, to get the message out that segregation was a bad thing, and it needed to come to an end.

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;

Plessy v. Ferguson- In the 1892 case of Plessy v Ferguson, Separate Car Act was challenged when Homer Plessy of mixed race sat in a railcar designated for white passengers. Louisiana’s Separate Car Act of 1890 required railroads to designate cars for both black and white passengers. Plessy was arrested for refusing to move to a car designated for blacks and charged in violation of this act. District Judge John Ferguson ruled the Separate Car Act was unconstitutional.

On June 7, 1892, Plessy boarded a New Orleans train and sat in the “whites only” car.  Plessy then informed the conductor that he was black and the railroad officials, following through on the arrangement, arrested Plessy and charged him with violating the Separate Car Act. Tourgée’s plan was officially in motion.  In the Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans, Tourgée argued that the law requiring “separate but equal accommodations” was unconstitutional as it violated the 13th & 14th Amendments. Further, as illustrated by Plessy’s arrest, there was no way for railroad companies to enforce the law. (Had Plessy not announced himself, no one would have ever known he was black.)  As Tourgée anticipated, Judge John H. Ferguson ruled

The case between Homer Plessy and Judge John H. Ferguson began when “Louisiana enacted the Separate Car Act, which required separate railway cars for blacks and whites,” according to the article “Plessy v. Ferguson” by Oyez. Plessy’s reaction towards this act was to challenge it. Encyclopedia Britannica’s article “Plessy v. Ferguson” states that, like Plessy, there was “a group of Creole professionals in New Orleans [who] formed the Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law.” Plessy was approached by this committee and asked to sit in a white’s only railcar. Even though Plessy “was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black, and had the appearance of a white man,” according to the article