Plessy Vs Ferguson Analysis

The case of Plessy v. Ferguson was based on the circumstances under which Homer Plessy bought a first class train ticket and deliberately sat in the train car reserved for whites, even though he was one eighth black. Homer was working with a group of people whose intention was to purposely get someone arrested for breaking the Louisiana law separating white and black train cars, so that they could bring the law to court. In 1896 the case went to court and both the Louisiana State Court and the Supreme Court ruled that the law was acceptable since it upheld the doctrine of “separate but equal” and that Plessy was at fault. There were many forces at play which helped push the courts towards their decisions, mainly custom, precedent, and the understanding …show more content…
It wasn’t until many years later, in 1809, that Jefferson apologized for his previous views on African Americans and said, “My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights” (Document E). Years after he had said that African Americans were inferior to whites since they could never be as smart as whites he changed his viewpoint and then said that if they apply themselves and are afforded the opportunity, they can indeed be intelligent. He goes on to say that even if they were inferior in intellect, that doesn’t change the fact that they should be given equal rights. This shows how over a course of about only thirty years the customs changed and the views towards African Americans changed completely. Many people however, still discriminated against African Americans and still thought of them as inferior even after slavery had been abolished. They had grown up being taught that simply because of their skin color they were different and somehow lesser than …show more content…
The courts used the Fourteenth Amendment as precedent for their decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson case. The Fourteenth Amendment says, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the Unites States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws...” (Document H). This amendment promised everyone equal protection under the law and forbade the States from passing laws that deprived people of their rights. In Document K, the majority opinion in the case stated, “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.” They used the Fourteenth Amendment as precedent and based their decision off of it. They used the amendment to justify their decision by saying that it only made whites and African Americans equal under the law and that it could not make them equal socially. As long as the custom existed that African Americans were inferior, there was no