Category: Writing

Plessy Comparison Video
The Case
The case began in 1892 when a man named Homer Plessy purchased a first-class train ticket for awhites-only car in Louisiana. Plessy was one-eighth black by heritage, but in the state of Louisiana hewas legally considered black. Two years earlier, the state of Louisiana passed a law requiring racial segregationof train cars. To protest the law, a group of concerned black, Creole, and white Louisianacitizens, called the Committee of Citizens, convinced Plessy to intentionally buy a ticket for a whites-only car. They expected push-back and wanted to challenge the law in court. As they predicted, the traincompany knew Plessy was coming and had him arrested almost as soon as he stepped into the car.Plessy’s case made its way through the Louisiana court system. His lawyers argued that the lawmandating4rail car segregation was unconstitutional because of the 14th Amendment, which ensured equalprotection under the law for all citizens. Their opponent, the state of Louisiana, argued that the14th Amendment only applied to nationwide laws, not state-specific laws. The courts all-sided against Plessy, but he and his lawyers kept appealing until they made it to the Supreme Court.[1]1.Prohibit(verb):to formally forbid something by law2.Oppression(noun):the state of being subject to unfair treatment or control3.Explicit(adjective):stated clearly and in detail, leaving no room for doubt.
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Supreme Court: A Final
VerdictSegregation was common across the country by the 1890s, not just in the South. Even Massachusettssegregated their public schools. It was clear that whatever the Supreme Court decided for Plessy’scase, it would have profound5and widespread consequences.The argument used against Plessy became one of the most famous in American legal history. The state ofLouisiana said that mandated segregation did not suggest that blacks were inferior to whites,because the whites-only train cars and the blacks-only train cars were of the same quality. They were equal. Looking at it that way, the segregated-train mandate did not violate the 14th Amendment’sequal protection requirement. The train cars were “separate, but equal,” and therefore it was constitutional.The Supreme Court sided with the state of Louisiana and convicted Plessy. There was only one judge whodisagreed. Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote an explanation of his dissenting6vote, explaining howwhite Americans saw themselves in a position of power, even if they were technically “equal” with others. He believed it was wrong to undermine the 14th Amendment in this way, when the majority of thecountry had favored the new law. The law, he argued, was “inconsistent with the personal liberty of citizens, white and black, in that state, and hostile to both the spirit and letter of the constitution of theUnited States.” He predicted that the Plessy decision would become one of the most infamous cases in supremeCourt history, and that it would set a precedent7of segregation across the country.
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5967064_1_Plessy-Comparison-Video.docx