Homer Adolph Plessy V. Ferguson

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Homer Adolph Plessy v. Ferguson was an early Supreme Court case that challenged state laws upholding segregation and, as Plessy thought, violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Plessy, in a protest movement, was recruited to sit in the whites only section of a train car and was arrested for it. When he was taken to court he protested that the train cars were separate and unequal and this violated his Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Unfortunately for Plessy, he lost in all three courts. In 1890, in the state of Louisiana, the Separate Car Act was passed which forced the separation of blacks and whites. This sparked outrage in a group of people, both colored and white from New Orleans who decided that they were going to fight this new law. They formed the Comité des Citoyens with the sole purpose of trying to establish equality for the blacks and whites. Eventually the Comité des Citoyens recruited an octoroon named Homer Plessy. Plessy was seven-eighths European dissent and one-eighth African, and therefore legally classified as black, despite having a pale skin tone. On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy bought a first class railroad ticket and boarded the train in …show more content…
Plessy and his legal team lost the trial at this level, but he was not easily discouraged. Plessy appealed to the next level: The Louisiana Supreme Court. He attempted the same strategy at this level, saying the segregation laws denied him his Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments rights. Again, the court ruled in favor of the state, leaving Plessy no choice but to appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in the past had decided that segregated schools were constitutional, so when Homer Plessy protested that it took away his Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments rights, the court was unwavering, voting 7-1 in favor of
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