Plessy V Ferguson

 







    In the year 1892 Homer Plessy a 7/8 Caucasian man, tried to challenge the law by sitting by sitting the white people’s cart only. Then there was a separate car act requiring blacks and whites to ride in different train carts. Technically under Louisiana law Plessy was considered Black, so he was asked to leave the car, but there he was arrested. 

    Plessy believed that this was a violation of his thirteenth and fourteenth amendment acts. The thirteenth amendment states “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” While the fourteenth amendment will grant equal citizenship rights to newly freed African American Slaves, saying “all people born or naturalized in the in the United States”. Meaning black people and all minorities are included in this.

    With the separate but equal act being in place he felt as if his amendment rights were being violated. Because if everything was equal there would not be segregation. Justice John Marshalls Harlan’s dissent was alone in his decision in the Plessy v Ferguson case. He used to be a former slave owner from Kentucky and used to be opposed to slaved during the reconstruction era, but due to the outrageous acts of the Kul Klux Klan his views changed. John Marshall stated, “dissent that segregation ran counter to the constitutional principle of equality under the law: “The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race while they are on a public highway is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution,” he wrote. “It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.” In his dissent. 

    I personally agree with Justice John Marshall, in that how can we have an amendment for equality for all people born and naturalized in the united yet separate them like one is more superior than the other. I believed that Homer Plessy should have won the case. 

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/thirteenth-amendment


https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fourteenth-Amendment

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