<em>Plessy v. Ferguson</em> (1896) was a Supreme Court decision that upheld the principle of "separate but equal" in regard to racial segregation. The Court's decision said that separate, segregated public facilities were acceptable as long as the facilities offered were equal in quality.
In the decades after the Civil War, 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 <em>Plessy v. Ferguson</em> 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 which at that time upheld the idea of "separate but equal" facilities.
Several decades later, the 1896 <em>Plessy v. Ferguson </em>decision was overturned. <em>Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka</em>, 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 <em>Plessy v. Ferguson</em> had been applied to education as it had been to transportation. In the case of <em>Brown v. Board of Education</em>, that standard was challenged and defeated. Segregation was shown to create inequality, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled segregation to be unconstitutional.
Plantation owners have slaves that plant and do their work for them, enslaved Africans work for plantation owners and ect, abolitionist want to end slavery
President Wilson's appearance in front of the Congress asking for the declaration of war against Germany in hopes that they could influence the terms of the postwar peace settlement.
He proclaimed that the world must be made safe for democracy, to fight for the right of those who submit to authority to be their voice in their governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations and for the safety of all nations and make the world itself free.
The U.S. Senate then voted in favor of war with 82 votes to 6 and two days later the House of Representatives also voted in favor with 373 votes to 50. This solidified and announced the participation of the United States into the First World War.
