Plessy v. Ferguson

As the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum during the Jim Crow era of America, a man by the name of Homer Adolph Plessy decided to take a stand for equality. Plessy challenged a Louisiana law that mandated "separate but equal accommodation for the white and colored races." "Separate but equal" was a standard everywhere in America at that time, and Plessy's case was the biggest challenge of this standard at that point. Plessy, as an activist, volunteered to fight for equality. He went and sat on the white section of a train in Louisiana, and, when the ticket collector of the train came to collect Plessy's ticket, Plessy, who looked white, revealed to the ticket collector that he was one-eighth black, and was then asked to sit in the colored section of the train. Plessy refused, was arrested, and his case was brought to the Supreme Court. The court decided in favor of Louisiana Judge Ferguson and enforced the standard of "separate but equal," asserting that

The decision of the court was consistent with the majority views of society at the time, and, in my opinion, was correctly decided considering the fairly weak argument that Plessy presented, but, was an incorrect ruling according to the laws in the Constitution. I feel that the highest level of the judicial branch of the United States should take into consideration not only the argument that is presented, but also the laws of the United States that may have not been presented in an argument, and I believe that the Supreme Court failed to do this in Plessy v. Ferguson.

This latter part of this clip details the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, and, if you can get past the narrator's accent, this video provides a very nice background and coverage of this case. This provided  a nice overall picture of the case and was one of the few videos on YouTube of the case that was well-rounded and fully informative.


Justice Brown labels Plessy's reasoning that separate cannot be equal as a fallacy because Brown asserted that the segregation laws "do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other." Brown argued that separate but equal can and does mean separate and equal.