Plessy Vs. Ferguson

Plessy v. Ferguson of 1896, was a historic constitutional law case of the Supreme Court. Regarding the state racial segregation laws for African Americans under the belief of “separate but equal”. The decision was passed by a vote of 7 to 1, written by Justice Henry Billings Brown and Justice John Marshall Harlan. “Separate but equal” lacked in true meaning. The courts believed most things were equal, but to the people, blacks got the cheaper, used, and abandoned parts of bathrooms, schools, stores, facilities, and more. In 1890, in Louisiana, a law was passed by the state, this was the Separate Car Act. This required a separate place for blacks and whites on railroads including separate railway cars. A group of African-Americans decided to repeal the law. This is where Homer Plessy gets involved.

The quote “separate but equal” comes from the Jim Crow Era of laws. Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued in force until 1965. Racial segregation in all public facilities in states of the former Confederate States of America, starting in 1890 with a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. Facilities for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to those available to European Americans. In some cases, they did not exist at all. This body of law institutionalized a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages.

Homer A. Plessy was born on March 17, 1862 and passed on March 1, 1925. He was classified as “1/8 black” or “octoroon”, meaning he was a man of mixed races between whites and blacks. Under Louisiana law, he was black, he had to follow all laws regarding segregation. On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first class ticket to the Press Street Depot and boarded a ‘whites only’ car of the East Louisiana Railroad in New Orleans. The railroad company, which whom opposed the law on the grounds that it would require the purchase of more railcars, had been informed ahead of time of Plessy’s racial origins, and his goal to challenge the law. The committee hired a private detective with arrest powers to detain Plessy, to make sure he would be charged for violating the Separate Car Act. After taking a seat in the whites-only railroad car, he was asked to get up and sit in the blacks-only car. Plessy refused and was arrested immediately by the detective. As planned, the train was stopped and he was removed off the train and remanded for trial in Orleans Parish.

In his case, Plessy’s lawyers argued that the state law, required East Louisiana Railroad to segregate train had denied him his rights under the 13th and 14th amendments of the United States Constitution. The 13th Amendment, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The 14th Amendment, addresses citizenship rights and equal protection