Jim Crow Laws: Plessy Vs. Ferguson

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For many years, segregation took place across the United States. Segregation occurred in many places including railways, schools, restaurants, hotels, theaters, and other areas of social life. In 1896, the court case of Plessy v. Ferguson took place. This case ruled that segregation was allowed as long as equal facilities were provided for both races. The principle of “separate but equal” was thereafter applied to all aspects of public life.
Soon after the Reconstruction period in 1877, the Southern State governments again became “white man’s governments.” New State Legislatures enacted laws to legally segregate the races and impose second-class citizenship upon African
Americans, and these laws became known as Jim Crow laws. The new laws created …show more content…
He had been selected to challenge the limits of the law by a group of citizens that was eager to challenge
Louisiana’s law. The circumstance was planned as a test case by the Committee of
Citizens, a local New Orleans group of people of color. Homer Plessy was born with a race status of seven-eighths white and one-eighths black. His appearance was the same as a white man, but he was considered black despite his complexion. Due to the statistics of his ancestry, he was required to sit in a car reserved for “colored” passengers. Homer Plessy had decided to take a seat in the section of the car reserved for white passengers only. The reservation for whites only in the section of the car was created by Louisiana law. A conductor of the car asked Plessy to move to a “colored” car, but he refused. This act of was remembered as one of the first “sit-ins” in United
States history. Once Plessy took his seat, he triggered a series of legal actions that would eventually reach the Supreme Court of the United States. Soon after, Plessy was arrested and imprisoned for violating an 1890 law. The law, called the …show more content…
I do not agree with the majority ruling of “separate but equal.” The separation of the races implied that colored people were not as superior as white people. The quote
Conner 5 “colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens” helps to describe the situation. Despite the
Supreme Court’s faith in “separate but equal,” Southern state governments refused to provide blacks with genuinely equal facilities and resources. The "separate but equal" doctrine was quickly extended to cover many areas of public life, such as restaurants, theaters, restrooms, and public schools. The doctrine was a fiction, as facilities for blacks were always inferior to those for whites. Due to the Plessy decision, many of the rights blacks won at both the state and federal level during the Reconstruction Era were erased through the “separate but equal” doctrine.
Plessy v. Ferguson allowed the ruling of “separate but equal,” also known as segregation to become law in the United States. The Plessy decision
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