In the historical court case of Plessy v. Ferguson of 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Louisiana’s segregation law mandating separate but equal accommodations for both black and whites on intrastate railroads was constitutional. This decision was the legal basis for other state and local governments to continue to legally separate blacks and whites socially until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of education in 1954. Homer Plessy, a shoemaker and native of New Orleans, who was recruited by the Citizens’ Committee of New Orleans to violate the Louisiana’s 1890 Separate Car law that segregated its passengers by race. In 1892, Mr. Plessy, whose skin color and physical features of a white male purchased a first class train ticket to ride in the “white-only” car, when the conductor asked him what was his race, he revealed that he was 7/8 white which meant he was considered a black man and was arrested when he refused to sit in the “black-only” car. Mr. Tourgee, attorney for Mr. Plessy, argued that his Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments had been violated.
It provided that there could be separate public facilities, like schools and movie theaters as long as the facilities were near equal in equality. The problem was that the court did not define “equal” in the quality, and the facilities for the blacks became second class. The government was willing to make it seems as though blacks would have rights due to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Supreme Court decision was a major setback for African Americans seeking equality in the United States. The ruling further paved the way for numerous state laws throughout the country making segregation which resulted in making discrimination legal in almost all parts of daily life.
They ruled that no state had the power to pass a law that went against the 14th amendment of the United States Constitution. The Civil war played a major role as well in segregation as we all well know. In ruling on a Louisiana Law it was a requirement that facilities for whites and African Americans on trains. In a Supreme Court case it was upheld for separate but equal rights. But in 1896 the decision the Court gave permission to segregated services.
1896 Plessy VS Ferguson US Supreme Court Case HIST222 African American History after 1877 Instructor Dr. Donna J. Nicol June 13, 2010 Back in the twentieth century African Americans were newly freed slaves. These were very hard time for the African American race. Even though they were free the laws of the land did not allow African Americans to be treated as everyone else. “The end of the Civil War had promised racial equality, but by 1900 new laws and old customs created a segregated society that condemned Americans of color to second-class citizenship.”(Museum of American History) African Americans had to follow a different set of laws called the Jim Crow Law. Jim Crow Law was used to keep blacks separate from whites.
After the American Civil War (1861–1865), the government provided protection for the civil rights of slaves. The Thirteenth Amendment was to abolish slavery, except as a punishment for crime. The term "slavery" implies involuntary servitude or bondage and the ownership by human beings of other human beings as property. In the Civil Rights Cases (1883), the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to the actions of government, not to those of private individuals, and as a result did not protect persons against individuals or private entities. The State of Louisiana passed Act 111 that required separate living quarters for African Americans and Whites on railroads.
Many Southern states were segregated, they followed the supreme courts decision in 1896; 'Separate but equal' this meant that they were still segregated but blacks had equal rights. Segregation was the separation of white people from black, some states tried to keep control over black people's segregation by; 'Jim crow' laws which kept black people segregated/separated from white, this involved separate schools, toilets and drinking fountains. Desegregation had become a problem in the 1950's, largely because of the racial hatred of white southerners towards blacks, this racial hatred had originated from the attitudes of white people towards black people after slavery was abolished in 1864, many southern states had 'Jim crow' laws which discriminated against African Americans. However, in 1954 the Brown family challenged these laws by suing the city school board for forbidding their 8 year old daughter, who was black, from attending the white school which was nearby, instead Linda Brown was forced to attend the segregated school which was a long distance away. The Brown family's case was brought to the Supreme Court by the NAACP; they were an organisation which fought for the rights of coloured people.
Jim Crow: A Clever Ruse with Cruel Intent by Nunya Buisness English 151 Professor Weezy 21 April 2013 Racial inequality and segregation was not a new manifestation. Before the Civil War, when slavery had established the status of most blacks, there was no apparent need for statutory measures segregating the races. The initial postwar governments passed a few segregation laws and some restrictive Black Codes, but these did not continue to exist past Reconstruction. What replaced them, however, was not racial integration but an informal code of exclusion and discrimination. (Litwack 8) The Jim Crow system gave Southern whites a legal way to reclaim all-encompassing control over the lives of blacks after the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Jim Crow is “the systematic practice of promoting the segregation of the Negro peoples” (North by South). “Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s” (Pilgrim). The Jim Crow Movement was a prominent factor that led to the control of the black population in America. It was a system used to obstruct basic rights for African-Americans. Jim Crow was a way of life, not just a set of unjust laws.
The Jim Crow laws were racial segregation laws enacted between 1876 and 1965 in the United States at the state and local level. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy, with, starting in 1890, a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. The separation in practice led to conditions for African Americans that tended to be inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages. De jure segregation mainly applied to the Southern United States. While Northern segregation was generally de facto, there were patterns of segregation in housing enforced by covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination, including discriminatory union practices for decades.
After the Supreme Court ruling, the New Orleans Comité des Citoyens, which had brought the suit and had arranged for Homer Plessy's arrest in an act of civil disobedience in order to challenge Louisiana's segregation law, stated, "We, as freemen, still believe that we were right and our cause is sacred." Background In 1890, the state of Louisiana passed a law that required separate accommodations for blacks and whites on railroads, including separate railway cars. On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket at the Press Street Depot and boarded a "whites only" car of the East Louisiana Railroad in New Orleans, Louisiana, bound for Covington, Louisiana. The railroad company, which opposed the law on the grounds that it would require the purchase of more railcars, had been previously informed of Plessy's racial lineage, and the intent to challenge the law. As planned, the train was stopped, and Plessy was taken off the train at Press and Royal streets.