Brown v Board of Education essays

Brown v Board of Education essays Analysis of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka On June 7, 1892 a man named Homer Adolph Plessy was arrested and jailed for refusing to leave the White section of an East Louisiana Railroad train. Although Plessy was only one-eighths black, under Louisiana law he was considered black and, therefore, required to sit in the Colored section. The punishment for breaking this law, the Separate Car Act, was a fine of twenty-five dollars or twenty days in jail. Plessy went to court and argued, in Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Louisiana, that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. The judge hearing the case was John Howard Ferguson, who had recently ruled that the Separate Car Act was unconstitutional if the train was traveling through different states. However, in Plessys case, he decided that the state had the right to segregate the trains that operated in Louisiana only. Therefore, Plessy was found guilty. He, then, appealed to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, which uphe ld Fergusons decision. In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States heard the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Once again, Fergusons decision was upheld and Plessy was found guilty. The Supreme Court decided that the Separate Car Act did not violate the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. This was too obvious for argument. They, also, decided that it did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, which made the two races absolutely equal in the eyes of the law. It was decided that there was no violation of the constitution to separate the two races as long as they were equal (Cozzens). An eight-person majority decided the case, and the only Judge to disagree was Justice John Harlan who seemed to predict the future when he wrote: Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citiz...