The Fight For Equal Rights

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Recommended: Also know as the New Negro Movement

In 1890, Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act. The law required all railroad companies carrying passengers, needed to have separate cars for whites and non-white passengers. Planned by the Citizens Committee, the Plessy Case sought out to test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Act, challenging it violates the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendment. Born in New Orleans, a 30-year-old shoemaker, Homer described himself as light complexioned because he was seven-eighths white and only one-eighth black, this made his race hard to identify. (American Experience, 2006) On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy boarded the East Louisiana train. He checked in as a black man; however, he sat in the first class “whites only” car. The railroad officials knew he was coming and arrested him just as the Citizens Committee had planned. Once arrested, Homer argued that they violated his Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery; in this case, Homer feels that his civil right to sit where he pleased made him feel as if enslaved to a certain part of the train. The Fourteenth Amendment acknowledges that all citizens born or native to the United States are citizens of the United States and of the State where they live. No State shall make or enforce any law that abridges the privileges or immunities of the citizens, nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law or deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (Ely, Finkelman, & Hall, 2005) The Fourteenth Amendment is to protect Homer’s personal liberty and American citizenship; however, the State was concerned about keeping social order, and peace. The case argued that... ... middle of paper ... ...ites; but as long as they were “equal.” From this case forward until 1954, that the “separate but equal” was knocked down. Up until 1954, the separate areas not just meant the railroad cars; but everywhere like restaurants, restrooms, schools and movie theaters. In 1954 in the case Brown v the Board of Education, the Supreme Court banished the segregation of black and white schools in the state of Kansas and twenty other states. If it were not for the Plessy case, the Brown case may not have turned out with the ruling it did. The Plessy case opened many doors and set a precedent for other cases that followed it. These cases helped start the closing down of segregation in the United States, although it took years, it was not without the effort of the attorneys and the people who fought for their freedom and truly considered equal by others and by the State.

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