Question

Read about the Plessy v Ferguson case. In your own words, write a half-page summary discussing the background of the case and the Supreme Court ruling.

Answer 1

After the Civil War, in 1868, the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution.  It stipulated that no state in the United States shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

In the decades after the Civil War, however, states in the South began to pass laws that sought to keep white and black society separate.  In the 1880s, a number of  state legislatures began to pass laws requiring railroads to provide separate cars for passengers who were black.  At the heart of the case that became Plessy v. Ferguson was an 1890 law passed in Louisiana in 1890 that required railroads to provide "separate railway carriages for the white and colored races.”

In 1892, Homer Plessy, who was 1/8 black, bought a first class train railroad ticket, took a seat in the whites only section, and then informed the conductor that he was part black.  He was removed from the train and jailed.  He argued for his civil rights before Judge John Howard Ferguson and was found guilty.  His case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld the idea of "separate but equal" facilities.

Homer Plessy was correct in his convictions, though.  The 14th Amendment really did protect his constitutional rights.  It just took a while for the nation to come to terms with that reality.  Several decades after Homer Plessy's case, the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision was overturned.  Brown v. Board of Education, decided by the US Supreme Court in 1954, extended civil liberties to all Americans in regard to access to education. The "separate but equal" principle of Plessy v. Ferguson had been applied to education as it had been to transportation.  Arguments in the case of Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al.  were heard before the Supreme Court in 1952 and 1953, and the Brown v. Board of Education decision was issued  in 1954.   The standard of "separate but equal" was challenged and defeated. Segregation was shown to create inequality, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled segregation to be unconstitutional.

Answer 2

Plessy vs. Ferguson was a Supreme Court case that took place in 1896. It all started when Homer Plessy, a man who is 1/8th African American, was asked to move from his seat in the all white section of a train car. Plessy refused to move since he had bought a seat in this section. He was promptly arrested for his refusal to abide by this law.

Homer Plessy would go on to change this law saying that it was unconstitutional. His lawyer argued that this was a violation of his 14th amendment rights. However, the Supreme Court ruled against Plessy. The majority opinion from the Supreme Court stated that this did not violate the 14th amendment as long as the facilities for blacks and whites were "separate but equal."

This ruling drastically changed American society, as other businesses and facilities became segregated by race. These laws would last for almost half a century in the United States.