Jim Crow Law: The Plessy V. Ferguson Case

Jim Crow laws are defined as any state or local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States between the 1870s and the 1950s. One law that is counted as a Jim Crow law is the Separate Car Act of 1890. This act was passed in Louisiana, and many people disagreed with it, particularly black people. One man named Homer Plessy challenged the constitutionality of this law, and ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986. Plessy claimed that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution, but Justice Henry Brown decided that segregation was allowed as long as the facilities were equal. Plessy v. Ferguson was one of the worst Supreme Court case decisions in history, and it encouraged racial discrimination and segregation for many years even after the case was finished. In 1890, the State of Louisiana passed a law called the Separate Car …show more content…
Ferguson,” National Archives). John Howard Ferguson was the judge hearing the case. Although in a previous case Ferguson had found the Separate Car Act unconstitutional for interstate travel, Ferguson ruled against Plessy in this district court because he found that the act was constitutional if it only applied to trains running within Louisiana. Plessy then “applied to the State Supreme Court for a writ of prohibition and certiorari” (“Plessy v. Ferguson,” National Archives). The reason Ferguson’s name appears in the title of this court case is because he was named in the petition to the Louisiana State Supreme Court (“Landmark Cases of the U.S. Supreme Court.”). The State Supreme Court ruled that the law was constitutional, but it also granted Plessy a “writ of error” so that he could appeal the case to the United States Supreme Court (our