Social and Political Impact of Homer Plessy

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Why is it that white is always associated as “good” and black is associated as “bad”? In society today, it is known that white people have a lot of upper hand power in everything from politics, the work force, education, the government, etc. This idea goes back more than one-hundred years in American History. It is known that American law was formed based upon the power struggle that blacks have been fighting for more than one-hundred years. There have been people like Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Emmett Till, and more to have impacted American History and shape what law is about today. The case of Homer Plessy marks a beginning in order to get the rightful equality that blacks deserve. Homer Plessy had many social and economic impacts that lead them to victory through the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Albion Tourgeé was the head of the New Orleans Citizen’s Committee which was a civil rights group made up of African Americans, whites, and creoles during the 1890s. In 1890, the Louisiana Segregated car act was passed which was a law that required all railroad cars to have a “white patrons only” car and a “Jim Crow” car. This meant that it made it equally illegal for a white to sit in the car set aside for Negros as for blacks to occupy seats in a carriage reserved for whites. This eventually became controversial because of mixed families; white fathers would have to sit in white railroad cars while the black mother and the mulatto children would sit in the black train cart. Tourgeé took it upon himself and his committee to challenge the constitutionality of the Separate Car law. After successfully leading a test case in which the Louisiana district court declared forced segregation in railroad cars traveling between states to be unconstitutional, the committee was eager to test Act No. 111 within a single state. Homer Plessy, a

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