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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 Plessy’s 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 upheld Ferguson’s decision. In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States heard the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Once again, Ferguson’s decision was upheld and Plessy was found guilty. The Suprem
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Southern blacks began to steadily move to the bigger cities in the North, and by 1920 a million and a half African Americans resided in northern cities. Davis, an attorney for the defense, then declared that the witnesses basically were not in the position to say that because they were not directly involved. In general, African Americans came into the postwar era expecting more equality than ever before. Brown reported this problem to the NCAAP and became the first plaintiff in the suit against the Board of Education in Topeka. A large factor that was involved was World War II. In order to really understand why the justices came to the decision they did, it is important to examine the Fourteenth Amendment, the more influential amicus curiae briefs, and the oral exchanges between the lawyers and the Court. They explained that segregation in schools was harmful to both the majority and minority groups. He was a World War II veteran, union member, and assistant pasture of his church. Board of Education of Topeka case, the conservative chief justice, Vinson, died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Furthermore, by the late 1800s most people, living in the North or West, stopped paying as much attention to the ongoing problems that southern blacks faced. 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. Finally, in 1954, the United States Supreme Court struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine in the case of Brown v. In the oral step, the lawyers speak for a limited amount of time.
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