Compare Landmark Cases Plessy vs. Ferguson and Brown vs. Board of EducationHomer Adolph Plessy, an African American civil rights activist from New Orleans, wanted to challenge a Jim Crow law in Louisiana. The Louisiana state legislature passed the law requiring “all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this state, shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored, races” in 1890. Just a few years before blacks were allowed to ride with whites except in first class. Plessy was arrested for being in an all white passenger car of the East Louisiana Railway.The first judge that Plessy saw was John J Ferguson of the Criminal district Court of New Orleans. Ferguson said that the law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1896, the Supreme Court heard Plessys case. Mr. Justice Brown represented the courts opinion. Brown stated that “If the civil and political rights of both races be equal one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.”Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former slave owner, represented Plessy. Harlan said that “Our Constitution is color blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.” The Supreme Court upheld Fergusons decision, and established the separate-but-equal standard. This standard made discrimination legal as long as the facilities provided for both races were equal. It would be more than half a century before this decision would be overturned in the Brown vs. Board of Education case. Oliver Brown was a rail road worker in Topeka Kansas, when he tried to enroll his daughter, Linda, in the third grade at the Su...
