boarded a train in New Orleans and took a seat in the car reserved for white travelers. Although he was partly white, Louisiana law still concidered this man a Negro. As a result, Homer Plessy was arrested by a detective and taken to the Criminal District Court of New Orleans. There, Judge John Ferfuson issued the penalty required by law. Still, Plessy appealed and took his case to the Supreme Court of Louisiana; and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he refered to the Fourteenth Amendment. (22)Finally, on May 6, 1896, the Supreme Court delivered it's verdict. With a vote of seven to one, the Court maintained Plessy's conviction. Henry Billings, Associate Justice stated that meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment was "undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law... but could not have been inteded to ablolish distinctions based on color." (22) He continued by stating that the segregation of the two races did not mean to imply that either race was inferior to the other in any way. Brown then stated that all laws should be followed and upheld "for the promotion for the public good, and not for the annoyance... or a particular class." However, he added that a law demanding the division of races on public railways is no "more abnoxious to the Fourteenth Amendment than that acts of Congress requiring separate schools for colored children in the District of Columbia." (22) Finally Brown concluded his opinion by stating: "If one rave be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane." (23)The Supreme Court's first major confrontation with the battle against segregation in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case ruled that "separate, but equal" facitlities did not violate the demands of the Constitution. This caused a chain reaction throughout the United States. Many of the states began to pass laws that demanded racial segregation in every aspect of lif...
