What I Learned from Plessy v. Ferguson 

In our class the other day, half the class presented a mock trial about the case: Plessy v. Ferguson. Most people know about this case because it changed the discrimination in America, aka changing history. While African Americans were free during this time, they still were not treated the same. 

Riding the train back then was obviously very common, but it was not so common to have whites and blacks in the same train car. They actually had two separate cars dividing the two races. Now in the case of Homer Plessy who was part white and part black, where do you go? You don't know; and this was the cause of the Plessy v. Ferguson trial. Homer Plessy was more of white decent than black decent so he got in the white train car. Mind you he was only 1/8th percent of African American decent. The conductor did not like this idea for he was still part black so he asked him to move to a different car with the other African Americans. Plessy obviously went against this for he was mostly white. Because of his defiance, he was sent to jail. He took them to court.

Plessy claimed that this act of racial injustice violated his 13th and 14th amendment. The court thought otherwise. They said that it did not because the cars were equal it was just a separation of race and they did not title him as a slave. The decision of this case kind of bothered me because they said that this act was constitutional under the Lousiana Jim Crow Law. I feel as thought it should've been felt with better so that they felt like they did not even need to separate race, but that happened later in history.