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Plessy V. Ferguson And Brown V Board Of Education

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Maximiliano Sanchez Victoria
Professor Linda Holt
Comprehensive Law Studies
3 October 2017
Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education Picture this: a world with no color. Would racism still exist? Or would people be discriminated based on other things such as height, weight, or the sound of their voice? We may never know the answer to these questions. Racism is still alive in the United States, but it is not as severe and oppressive as it was during the era of the Jim Crow laws. The 13th amendment freed the slaves in the United States, however, not many white Americans agreed with this. The 13th amendment did not shield the African Americans from oppression, “The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as ‘Jim Crow’ …show more content…

There was no clarification on what race would be considered white or what would be considered black. During this incident, “Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth African American, purchased a rail ticket for travel within Louisiana and took a seat in a car reserved for white passengers. (The state Supreme Court had ruled earlier that the law could not be applied to interstate travel.) After refusing to move to a car for African Americans, he was arrested and charged with violating the Separate Car Act.”(Duignan 2017). Judge Ferguson ruled that the separation was fair and did not violate the fourteenth amendment. The state Supreme Court also backed up this decision. The case was brought to the Supreme Court and "The law was challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that it conflicted with the 13th and 14th Amendments. By a 7-1 vote, the Court said that a state law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between the two races did not conflict with the 13th Amendment forbidding involuntary servitude, nor did it tend to reestablish such a condition." (History.com Staff 2009). This decision set the key precedent of Separate but Equal in the United States. Racial segregation kept growing. In 1954 the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional. During the 1950s, "...civil rights groups set up legal and political,

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