Plessy V Ferguson Case

Homer Plessy was jailed of sitting in the white car of Eat Luisiana Railroad on June. Plessy, a 30-year-old colored man was required to sit in the “colored” car despite his light complexion. In 1892,  when Louisiana passed the separate “Car Act” a black civil rights organization decided to challenge the law in courts. PLessy intentionally sat in the white section and identified himself as a black person, he was then arrested and the case went to the Supreme Court.  Furthermore, Plessy’s lawyer argued that the Car Act has violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the constitution and therefore the Supreme Court heard the case and held Louisiana’s segregation status as “constitutional” in 1896 arguing  that "A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races, has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races. 

The object of the Fourteenth Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.” as Justice Brown said. On the other hand, Justice Harlan said : "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. ... The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution." 

A question of which is states could constitutionally enact legislation requiring persons of different races to use “separate but equal” segregated facilities was issued. From Justice Brown’s point of view, he think that yes states could do that. The Plessy decision set the precedent that spirit facilities for black and whites are constitutional as long as they aw equal, and that is what they mean by “separate but equal”. It was later on found that the doctrine has extended to cover many public areas like restaurants, schools and restrooms; however, it turned on that the doctrine was fiction where black facilities where inferior to those for white. The case was overruled by Brown V Board of Education in 1954 where Justice Warren wrote the opinion for a “unanimous  court” holding that “separate facilities which segregate based on race are inherently unequal.”