Legal Segregation: The Plessy V. Ferguson Case

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The truth of legal segregation is hidden behind a wall of mystery or is that actually the truth? The Plessy v. Ferguson case lead to legal segregation. That legal segregation was the beginning of the tensions between whites and blacks. This led to the civil rights movements. That, in turn, lead to Brown v. Board of Education that had led to the overturning of The Plessy v. Ferguson case. The Plessy v. Ferguson case was the beginning of legal segregation in schools,voting, and any other type of discriminatory laws that dealt with race between 1896-1954. It also ended legal segregation with it being overturned by Brown v. Board of Education. The Plessy v. Ferguson case was a trial case for the Separate Car Act. The Separate Car Act was a law …show more content…
It was only when Homer A. Plessy appealed it to take it to the Supreme Court that is the Jim Crow laws itself became constitutional . This is shown when Plessy v. Ferguson: The Effects of Lawyering on a challenge to Jim Crow says “In his fifth and final point, Walker assailed the state supreme court’s ruling that conductors had no final authority in the assignment of passenger cars based on race” (Hoffer pg.19). This is stating that the Supreme Court had no right in ruling what it was but the outcome of the case was that as long as it was “separate but equal”. It could be considered constitutional. That is the point in which legal segregation had came to …show more content…
Ferguson case decision was made. It also shows how the Jim Crow laws had become extreme with the decision made on the Plessy v. Ferguson case. That was shown in the last few paragraphs where this paper had talked about how you were not able to marry a black person if white, and that if you were white you could not marry a black person. The Brown v. Board of Education leads to the overturning of the Plessy v. Ferguson. Jim Crow started to fall and that lead to the ending of legal segregation in schools and many other things. The Plessy v. Ferguson case started legal segregation and ended it with Brown v. Board of Education. The ending of legal segregation may not have happened if the Brown v. Board of Education case never happened. This may not have occurred because without it the case it would not have shown that Jim Crow laws were unconstitutional. “In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) a unanimous Supreme Court declared that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The Court declared “separate” educational facilities “inherently unequal.”( “Board of Education of Topeka”,khanacademy.org). With that, this paper has shown the many different sides of how Plessy v. Ferguson was the true beginning and end of legal

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