Pros And Cons Of The Separate Car Bill

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For over 50 years, the southern states of the American enforced a policy of separate accommodations for blacks and whites on the buses and trains, and in hotels, theaters and schools. In 1890, the Louisiana State Legislature proposed the Separate Car Bill which segregated Blacks from Whites in separate but equal conditions on train cars. Violations of the law were considered as a misdemeanor crime that would give punishment by charge a fine of at most $25 or twenty days arrest in jail. Even though blacks superficially got their rights, but many of them still disagreed with the ruling, and felt that the separating blacks from whites in public facilities created inequality and marked one race as inferior to another. Homer Plessy, who has seven-eighths Caucasian descent and one-eighth African descent attempted to sit in an all-white-railroad car in 1896. After refusing to sit in the black railway carriage car, Plessy was arrested for violating the Louisiana Separate Car Act, which required that all railroads operating in the state provide "equal but separate accommodations" for white and African American passengers, it prohibited passengers from entering accommodations other than those to which they had been assigned on basis of their race. Plessy went to court and argued that the separate cars violated the Thirteen and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution, which was made in order to abolish slavery and to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law. The judge of this time was John Howard Ferguson; he stated that Louisiana had the right to regulate railroad companies as long as they operated within state boundaries. Plessy was convicted and sentenced to pay a $25 fine. Plessy decided to appeal the decision to ... ... middle of paper ... ...y face the more basic question of whether separating whites and blacks was an inherently discriminating act that by nature ensured unequal treatment. In Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, the Court overturned the Plessy decision, declaring, in a now-famous phrase, “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” My view on this particular case sides with Plessy rather than Ferguson. I believe in total equality and the idea of no difference between fellow human beings. There should be no distinction made between that which is for the white man, and that which is for the black man. Public institutions should be used by everyone together, and the act of riding a train car should not be a racial matter. I also agree that this segregation was a violation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendment in that it didn't promote the idea of equality among the races.

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