How long was plessy v. ferguson

Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help. The U. Supreme Court changes history on May 18, ! Ferguson on that date upheld state-imposed Jim Crow laws.

It became the legal basis for racial segregation in the United States for the next fifty years. Ferguson was a landmark U. The case stemmed from an incident in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for Black people.

As a result, restrictive Jim Crow legislation and separate public accommodations based on race became commonplace. After the Compromise of led to the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, Democrats consolidated control of state legislatures throughout the region, effectively marking the end of Reconstruction. Southern Black people saw the promise of equality under the law embodied by the 13th Amendment , 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment to the Constitution receding quickly, and a return to disenfranchisement and other disadvantages as white supremacy reasserted itself across the South.

As historian C. Vann Woodward pointed out in a article about Plessy v. Florida became the first state to mandate segregated railroad cars in , followed in quick succession by Mississippi , Texas , Louisiana and other states by the end of the century. As Southern Black people witnessed with horror the dawn of the Jim Crow era, members of the Black community in New Orleans decided to mount a resistance.

At the heart of the case that became Plessy v. On June 7, , Plessy bought a ticket on a train from New Orleans bound for Covington, Louisiana, and took a vacant seat in a whites-only car. Convicted by a New Orleans court of violating the law, Plessy filed a petition against the presiding judge, Hon. John H. Ferguson, claiming that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Over the next few years, segregation and Black disenfranchisement picked up pace in the South, and was more than tolerated by the North.

Congress defeated a bill that would have given federal protection to elections in , and nullified a number of Reconstruction laws on the books.

Then, on May 18, , the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Plessy v. As highlighted last week , the legal history of Jim Crow accelerated in , when the Supreme Court struck down the federal Civil Rights Act of for using the 14th Amendment to root out private as opposed to state discrimination.

The Civil Rights Cases opened the floodgates for Jim Crow segregation, with transportation leading the way, and not just on ferry lines. To say Plessy was a long shot on such terrain is an understatement. Five months later, on Nov. They filed their appeal with the U. Supreme Court on Jan. Why not require all colored people to walk on one side of the street and the whites on the other?

Why not require every white business man to use a white sign and every colored man who solicits custom a black one? Six-sevenths of the population are white. Nineteen-twentieths of the property of the country is owned by white people. Ninety-nine hundredths of the business opportunities are in the control of white people … Indeed, is it [reputation] not the most valuable sort of property, being the master-key that unlocks the golden door of opportunity?

As Justice Henry Brown's opinion put it, "if one race be inferior to the other socially, the constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane. The Court expressly rejected Plessy's arguments that the law stigmatized blacks "with a badge of inferiority," pointing out that both blacks and whites were given equal facilities under the law and were equally punished for violating the law.

If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. There is no caste here.

Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. Ferguson gave a "constitutional nod" to racial segregation in public places, foreclosing legal challenges against increasingly-segregated institutions throughout the South. The railcars in Plessy notwithstanding, the black facilities in these institutions were decidedly inferior to white ones, creating a kind of racial caste society.