"Plessy vs. Ferguson"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses that, although the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to the former slaves, the Supreme Court's interpretation of this Amendment in "Plessy v. Ferguson", greatly harmed the Civil Rights Movement. The author explains that in 1896, "Plessy v. Ferguson" determined that the standard of equal-but-separate accommodations for black and white passengers on the intrastate Louisiana train system was not in defiance of these Fourteenth Amendment rights. The author believes that, by making social equality the problem of the community and not the government, the court effectively washed its hands of the problem of racism, deeming that phenomenon a social ill that may only be rectified at the grass roots level.

From the Paper:

"First, the Supreme Court maintained that enforced separation did not, could not, stamp the black race with a "badge of inferiority"(50). The nature of equal-but-separate legislation was mutually exclusive; a white man was as prohibited from occupying a black rail car as a black man was from occupying a white one. And, with both black and white cars being comparably furnished, the court reasoned that blacks and whites were therefore being treated equally under the law (34). By this interpretation, no privileges of any citizen were seen as having been abridged, and thus the integrity of the Fourteenth Amendment was ruled to be in tact."

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