Plessy Vs. Ferguson Trial

Louisiana passed a statute that made it mandatory that trains provide “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races” in 1890. The fine for breaking this statute was a $25 fine or 20 days in jail. Homer Plessey a colored 30 year old shoemaker from New Orleans broke this law in 1892 because he was only an eighth black, but even this small percentage caused the state to label him as a “colored” person. This was planned by the Citizens' Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law, a committee that was against the law that caused segregation in trains. When Plessey refused to move to the colored section he was arrested. Plessey took the case to court but Judge John Howard Ferguson ruled against him. Plessey took the case to the Louisiana Supreme Court but they ruled in favor of Ferguson. He then took the cause to the United States Supreme Court.

The Citizens' Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law appointed Albion Tourgee as its legal representative. Tourgee argued that the law was unconstitutional, that it was a violation against Plessey’s civil rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Ferguson said that the law was unconstitutional only for trains passing through several states, but since it was only in Louisiana the law was constitutional. He believed that states had a right to set segregation policies within its own territory.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ferguson in an eight to nine decision. Justice Henry Brown said that the Thirteenth amendment protected the civil rights of blacks. Blacks had the same civil rights as whites, but were not socially equal since they were not as socially advanced as the whites were. They also said that Tourgee’s arguments that it was against the Fourteenth amendment were invalid because the separate car law was not meant to degrade blacks, since both whites and blacks had separate but equal cars, and that the law worked both ways, whites were forbidden to sit in the colored cars. Justice