Plessy V Ferguson Court Case

Erica Criollo 802
The Evolving Stance of Segregation

In Plessy v Ferguson the court ruled that segregation was constitutional so long as the provided separate facilities were equal. For the next fifty eight years, states created laws that supported their own policies of segregation. Known as Jim Crow Laws, these laws continued to discriminate against African Americans across nation. It was not until 1954 when the case
Brown v Board of Education when the court reached a decision to overturn segregation and ruled unconstitutional. In 1890, the state of Louisiana passed a law (the Separate Car Act) that required separate
accommodations for blacks and whites on railroads, including separate railway cars. A group called Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) dedicated to repeal the law.They persuaded
Homer Plessy, a man of mixed race, to participate in a test case. Plessy was a Creole of Color and had light skin. However, under Louisiana law, he was classified as black, and thus required to sit in the "colored" car. On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first­class ticket and boarded a
"whites only" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. After Plessy took a seat in the whites­only railway car, he was asked to get up and sit instead in the blacks­only car. Plessy refused and was arrested immediately. Plessy argued that the state law which required East Louisiana Railroad to segregate trains had denied him his rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments of the United States
Constitution, which provided for equal treatment for both races. As a fully participating citizen,

Plessy should not have been denied any rights of citizenship. He should not have been required to give up any public right of access. The Louisiana law violated the Equal Protection Clause and was, therefore, unconstitutional. However, the judge presiding over his case, John Howard Ferguson, ruled that Louisiana had the right to regulate railroad companies while they operated within state boundaries. A separate but equal facility provided the protections required by the 14th Amendment and satisfied the demands of white citizens as well. The Separate Car Act did not conflict with the Thirteenth
Amendment, according to Brown, because it did not reestablish slavery or constitute a “badge” of slavery or servitude. In reaching this conclusion he relied on the Supreme Court’s ruling in the
Civil Rights Cases, which found that racial discrimination against African Americans in inns, public conveyances, and places of public amusement “imposes no badge of slavery or involuntary servitude…but at most, infringes rights which are protected from State aggression by the XIVth Amendment.” Yet the act did not conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment either,
Brown argued, because that amendment was intended to secure only the legal equality of African
Americans and whites, not their social equality. The supreme court decided that separate facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional as long as they were equal. This law quickly spread through public places such as theaters, restrooms, restaurant, and public schools.

From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation through
Jim Crow Laws.The Jim Crow system was undergirded by the following beliefs or rationalizations: whites were superior to blacks in all important ways, including but not limited to intelligence, morality, and civilized behavior. States used it to impose legal punishments on people for interacting with people of another race. "Jim Crow" laws did such things as pass unfair poll taxes and voting tests to keep African­Americans from voting. Most Blacks were poor and could not read or write. Soon, it became very difficult for African­Americans to cast their vote or hold public office. Other forms of segregation were also practiced in schools, restaurants, and transportation. Blacks could only attend separate schools from whites, eat in separate restaurants, drink from separate fountains, and ride in the back of the public bus. This also affected African American children. In the court case Brown v.
Board of Education, Linda Brown was an African American student in the Topeka, Kansas school district. Every day she and her sister, Terry Lynn, had to walk through the Rock Island Railroad Switchyard to get to the bus stop for the ride to their school. Linda Brown tried to gain admission to a school near her home but her application was denied because of her race. Her father
Oliver Brown, had sued the school system in Topeka arguing that the school his daughter went to, which had only African­American students, had to be equal to the school that only white Americans went to. Further, Brown alleged, the school system was discriminating against African­American students in violation of the 14th
Amendment, which granted all Americans the right to equal protection and, by extension, the right to an equal education.

 The court denied that there was any violation of Brown's rights because of the "separate but equal" doctrine established in the Supreme Court's 1896 Plessy decision. The court claimed the schools for whites and blacks were substantially equal. The Browns appealed their case to the
Supreme Court of the United States, claiming that the segregated schools were not equal
and could never be made equal.
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously announced an end to public segregation in schools in the famous Brown v. Board of Education of case.