Plessy/Brown activity

In 1890, Louisiana passed a statute called the "Separate Car Act". It declared that all rail companies carrying passengers in Louisiana had to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and non-white passengers. The penalty for sitting in the wrong compartment was a fine of $25 or 20 days in jail.

Two parties wanted to challenge the constitutionality of the Separate Car Act. A group of black citizens who raised money to overturn the law worked together with the East Louisiana Railroad Company, which sought to terminate the Act largely for monetary reasons. They chose a 30-year-old shoemaker named Homer Plessy, a citizen of the United States who was one-eighth black and a resident of the state of Louisiana. On June 7, 1892, Plessy purchased a first-class passage from New Orleans to Covington, Louisiana and sat in the railroad car for "White" passengers. The railroad officials knew Plessy was coming and arrested him for violating the Separate Car Act. Well-known advocate for black rights Albion Tourgee, a white lawyer, agreed to argue the case for free.

Plessy argued in court that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment requires that the government treat people equally. John Howard Ferguson, the judge hearing the case, had stated in a previous court decision that the Separate Car Act was unconstitutional if applied to trains running outside of Louisiana. In this case, however, he declared that the law was constitutional for trains running within the state and found Plessy guilty.

Plessy appealed the case to the Louisiana State Supreme Court, which affirmed the decision that the Louisiana law was constitutional. Plessy then took his case, Plessy v. Ferguson, to the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the country. Judge John Howard Ferguson was named in the case because he had been named in the petition to the Louisiana State Supreme Court, not because he was a party to the initial lawsuit.

Supreme Court of the United States

The Court upheld the Louisiana State Supreme Court's decision and declared that the "Separate Car Act" was constitutional as long as there were separate but equal accommodations for both whites and blacks. It further stated that the legal distinction made by the Act did not in any way destroy the legal equality of the two races.

(As to the question Plessy raised in his petition to the Louisiana State Supreme Court about his not being black, the U.S. Supreme Court stated it may be an important question, but the question was not properly put in issue in this case.)

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Plessy filed a petition for writs of error and certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States, arguing that the "Separate Car Act" violated the 13th and 14th Amendments.

Louisiana State Supreme Court

Rejected Plessy's argument that Judge Ferguson's ruling should be overturned; the Court affirmed the constitutionality of the Separate Car Act and further stated Plessy refused to admit he was black.

Ex parte Plessy (1892)

Plessy petitioned the Louisiana Supreme Court not as an appeal of the district court decision but in a separate case on his behalf, for a writ of prohibition to stop Judge Ferguson from continuing the legal proceedings against him. Plessy argued that he was only 1/8 black, that the mixture of colored blood was not discernible in him, and thus that he should be afforded all the rights and privileges of a white man.

Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans

Judge Ferguson of state district court found Plessy guilty of not leaving the car for whites when asked to; denied claim that Separate Car Act was unconstitutional because Louisiana could regulate its railroad companies however it saw fit as long as equal accommodations were provided.

State of Louisiana v. Plessy (1892)

In Topeka, Kansas in the 1950s, schools were segregated by race. Each day, Linda Brown and her sister, Terry Lynn, had to walk through a dangerous railroad switchyard to get to the bus stop for the ride to their all-black elementary school. There was a school closer to the Brown's house, but it was only for white students

Under the laws of the time, many public facilities were segregated by race. The precedent-setting Plessy v. Ferguson case, which was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1896, allowed for such segregation. The Supreme Court of the United States held that as long as segregated facilities were qualitatively equal, segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. In doing so, the Court classified segregation as a matter of social equality, out of the control of the justice system concerned with maintaining legal equality. The Court stated, "If one race be inferior to the other socially, the constitution of the United States cannot put them on the same plane." Segregation in schools and other public places was common throughout the South and elsewhere.

However, the Brown's disagreed with the ruling. The Browns felt that the decision of the Board violated the Constitution. They sued the Board of Education of Topeka, alleging that the segregated school system deprived Linda Brown of the equal protection of the laws required under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) helped the Browns. Thurgood Marshall was the attorney who argued the case for the Browns. He would later become a Supreme Court justice.

The case was first heard in a federal district court, the lowest court in the federal system. The federal district court decided that segregation in public education was harmful to black children. However, the court said that the all-black schools were equal to the all-white schools because the buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of the teachers were similar; therefore the segregation was legal.

The Browns, however, believed that even if the facilities were similar, segregated schools could never be equal to one another. They appealed their case to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court combined the Brown's case with other cases from South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. The ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case came in 1954.

Questions to Consider:

Supreme Court of the United States (1955)
Declared that schools should be desegregated with "all deliberate speed."

The case was reargued
to determine how the
violation of the Fourteenth
Amendment should be fixed.

Supreme Court of the United States (1954)
Ruling determined that segregated schools are "inherently unequal" and violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

Court also rules on the companion case, Bolling v. Sharpe, which holds the District of Columbia segregated schools violate the Fifth Amendment.

Brown case is combined
with others from Virginia,
South Carolina, and Delaware
and bypasses the circuit court.

U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas (1951)

The court found that segregation has a negative effect on black children, but it decided that segregated schools did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment because facilities, transportation, teachers, and other factors were equal.

Answer the questions. Draw a political cartoon to interpret the message of the decision.

Analyze the cartoon in terms of its relation to Brown v. Board of Education.