Compare And Contrast Plessy Vs Ferguson And Brown Vs Board Of Education

Segregation was a long fought battle, from Claudette Colvin to iconic hero Rosa Parks, to every other person who joined the battle against segregation, people had to fight for the rights they should have had as human beings. However, this tireless battle didn't end at people standing against segregation in everyday occurrences, it leads on to create two of the most important court cases dealing with segregation known, Plessy vs Ferguson and Brown vs Board of Education. The conclusions of the Plessy vs Ferguson case, and the Brown vs Board of Education case were infinitely different, but the cases themselves showing very apparent similarities. These court cases show to us that even in when faced with a pile of evidence some will simply refuse …show more content…
Plessy vs Ferguson and Brown vs Board of education was considered similar in many ways, a large one being the fact that they both heavily dealt with segregation and its effects, while one case handled the arrest of Homer Plessy, another dealt with the dangers that young Linda Brown and her sister were put through every day to reach her all-black school. One point was made by Justice John Marshall Harlan in the case of Plessy vs Ferguson that seemed similar to a quote from the case of Brown vs Board of Education, when Harlan mentions the fact that they could not allow belief to spread through law that there was a superior race, and it was concluded in the Brown vs Board of Education case that, "separate education facilities are inherently unequal." These two quotes don't sound as similar as they are, seeing as they both stand for the same problem, separate but equal would never truly support equality, if two schools are separated and people are more fond of the children in one school, it is not equal. The same is put for the Plessy vs Ferguson case, if the people on a train were split and one car was known to be preferred over the other, then the two cars were not equal. Linda Brown and Homer Plessy were also faced with the fact that segregation caused inconveniences for them, Linda Brown and her sister had to walk across a dangerous railroad switchyard to make to a bus that would then take them even further to a schools for all-blacks, this seemed ridiculous seeing as there was a school closer to their home, but they could not attend the school that was easiest for them to reach because it was for white citizens, and Homer Plessy was arrested for the fact that he had purchased a ticket for first class, and first class was for white citizens, Plessy was one-eighth black, and even though he had paid for this