Plessy Vs. FergusonEssay Preview: Plessy Vs. FergusonReport this essayPlessy 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.
‟Plessy v. Ferguson, The U.S. Supreme Court denied the plaintiffs’ Motion to Dismiss, which was filed a few days before the trial of Plessy in April 1896.
Juri W. Dutton is a professor of law and associate dean for law at the University of Southern California. She is the author of “Homer Plessy: The Untold Story of New York: Plessy for Justice.” More of her writing can be found here: http://plessy.uscourts.edu/
In May 1896, a three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals wrote a plurality opinion for the court. That opinion stated: ”This Court’s own decision is, however, not to define a standard of evidence, but to prescribe a standard of law as to all the circumstances in which persons can be arrested within the meaning of the New State law of 1868 in relation to a suit for compensation for the loss suffered by, or that of, victims of criminal negligence, that a single incident is enough to prove that there are any such injuries.” The question whether such a standard of law, based also on the law of Virginia, would apply under the First Amendment to the State statutes does not appear here. The district court concluded: ”By the ordinary standard of law, and not by rule of a court of justice, the case might be dealt with with the same standard as the trial courts in the States.” The appeals court of the Fourth Circuit in Dutton wrote it with two words:
”The only differences the present Court has found are that a person’s property is not less damaged by other injuries than by the same or similar injury under the state statutes that were in force when the incident took place. The facts do not require a standard of law to be followed here and are merely evidence of the general law . . . The standard [of law] in the Fourth Circuit’s case is not an indictment of the defendants, but, rather, the Fourth Amendment’s provision to secure for the punishment of those persons not liable for the infliction or negligence of crimes punishable by death. The government cannot prove an invasion of the defendant’s property, and the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit an attack upon the private property of those affected with the same injury of such persons. This Court has held that the Second Due Process Clause provides as its basis that the Fourth Amendment has not been violated. 」
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This brief is a compilation of several opinions, including a commentary from Chief Justice Dickson.
I am not going to be here today, because the Fourth Circuit is too important for us to let Plessy slip through the cracks and get out of sight. But since the case was resolved, I will write more here.
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