This Supreme Court case involved Homer Plessy and Louisiana. Louisiana had previously passed the Separate Car Act which legally allowed segregation in public transportation. Homer Plessy was only 1/8 African and therefore did not look colored. He and a civil rights group felt that this Act was unjust and unconstitutional. Plessy decided to protest and call out the wrongness of the Separate Car Act by sitting in the white part of the train and specifically identifying himself as black. He was arrested and in the Supreme Court his lawyer argued that the Act was unconstitutional because it violated the thirteenth and fourteenth amendment. The majority was against Plessy with only one dissenting and Justice Brown gave the opinion. He stated that clearly Louisiana's Separate Car Act did not conflict with the thirteenth amendment because that amendment was made to abolish slavery and involuntary servitude. Brown also referred back to the Slaughter House case by saying the this amendment was not enough to protect people of color from some southern laws. He also used this case when saying that the fourteenth amendment was meant to grant citizenship and equality before the law. The Supreme Court interpreted this by concluding that race separation was acceptable because it technically did not involve putting down a race if the segregation was equal.
Significance:
This "separate but equal" precedent spread rapidly and soon after most public facilities were segregated including bathrooms, water fountains, schools, benches and so much more. This precedent was for the most part a lie because colored sections were never equal to white sections and nothing was done about it. It was a daily reminder of everyone's place in society and brought America back to looking like pre-civil war but without the slavery. Segregation and the Jim Crows laws ruled the lives of anyone colored and were set in place to lift and unify whites against people different than them.
This "separate but equal" precedent spread rapidly and soon after most public facilities were segregated including bathrooms, water fountains, schools, benches and so much more. This precedent was for the most part a lie because colored sections were never equal to white sections and nothing was done about it. It was a daily reminder of everyone's place in society and brought America back to looking like pre-civil war but without the slavery. Segregation and the Jim Crows laws ruled the lives of anyone colored and were set in place to lift and unify whites against people different than them.