What we’re going to do today

Agenda: – Let’s Remember– Investigative Reading– Closure

By the end of class, you will be able to identify and describe the main impact of the “separate but equal” rule created by the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling.

By the end of class, you will be able to identify and describe the main impact of the “separate but equal” rule created by the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling.

What do you remember?

• What are some examples of Jim Crow Laws? One kind: Disenfranchisement

Another: Segregation

Some examples (PDF)

Plessy v. Ferguson

Investigative Reading

1. What law did Homer Plessy violate? How did Plessy violate this law?

- The Separate Car Act- Bought a ticket to sit in the “Whites only” car- Planned by Citizen’s Committee; one-eighth

Investigative Reading

2. What rights do the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments provide? Why did Plessy believe that the Separate Car Act violated these rights?

• 13th: FREE, bans slavery• 14th: CITIZENSHIP, equal protection

• Wanted same rights & protection under the law as all other citizens or races

Investigative Reading

3. Judge Ferguson decided that the state could make laws for railroad companies that traveled within the state but not for those that traveled between states. On what basis can Judge Ferguson treat these two situations differently?

Within one state, the state government makes the lawsWhen it crosses state lines, the Federal (national) government

makes the lawsPlessy vs. Ferguson was a NATIONAL case, judges decided it was

a STATE issue & Louisiana could make whatever laws it wanted

Investigative Reading

4. What claim did Plessy make to the Louisiana State Supreme Court? How did his claim reflect on his argument that his Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated?

He said the Separate Car Act was UNCONSTITUTIONALThe 14th Amen. Gives EQUAL protection under the law for ALL

citizens

Summary

• Plessy vs. Ferguson made “separate but equal” legal in the United States

Homework & Announcements

* Take out your agenda!

• No Homework!• Interim Grades go home

next week: Reconstruction Summative

• Jim Crow Summative: next Wednesday

Investigative Reading

1. What law did Homer Plessy violate? How did Plessy violate this law?

- The Separate Car Act- Bought a ticket to sit in the “Whites only” car- Planned by Citizen’s Committee; one-eighth

Investigative Reading

2. What rights do the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments provide? Why did Plessy believe that the Separate Car Act violated these rights?

13th: FREE, bans slavery14th: CITIZENSHIP, equal protection

Wanted same rights & protection under the law as all other citizens or races

Investigative Reading

3. Judge Ferguson decided that the state could make laws for railroad companies that traveled within the state but not for those that traveled between states. On what basis can Judge Ferguson treat these two situations differently?

Within one state, the state government makes the lawsWhen it crosses state lines, the Federal (national) government

makes the lawsPlessy vs. Ferguson became a NATIONAL case, judges decided it

was a STATE issue & Louisiana could make whatever laws it wanted

Investigative Reading

4. What claim did Plessy make to the Louisiana State Supreme Court? How did his claim reflect on his argument that his Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated?

He said the Separate Car Act was UNCONSTITUTIONALThe 14th Amen. Gives EQUAL protection under the law for ALL

citizens

The legal tradition of “separate but equal” dates to the nineteenth century and the Plessy v. Ferguson case. The case centered on a mixed-race man, Homer Plessy. He was one-eighth black and seven-eighths white, but he was considered to be a black person in the South. In 1896 Plessy was arrested when he refused to leave a whites-only train car. He was tried and convicted for violating Louisiana’s segregation laws. The Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson legalized segregation in the United States. Legal segregation was the law in the South for the next fifty years until the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling changed everything.