To Kill A Mockingbird: The Plessy Vs. Ferguson Case

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To Kill A Mockingbird is a novel that shows the reader with complicated issues that are seen from the perspective of a young child. Some of the issues that Scout, the young female protagonist, has a hard time dealing with are the issue of being a girl and the issue of rape. In the book, a black man named Tom Robinson is accused of a crime. Little bit like the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, in which a black man named Homer Plessy who also accused of a crime. On June 7th, 1892, 30-year-old Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the “white” car. When Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act in 1892, it legally segregated common carriers. Plessy’s lawyer argued that the Separate Car Act violated the 13th and 14th amendments to the constitution. The …show more content…
Ferguson case caused the Supreme Court Plessy vs. Ferguson ruled against him to install a “separate but equal” doctrine which became the benchmark for segregation. Justice Henry Brown argued that as long as racially separate facilities were equal they didn’t violate the 14th amendment’s guarantees of equal protection of the law. Due to the Plessy vs. Ferguson case decisions, southern states began to pass laws requiring segregation and stated that anyone not following the law could be punished. In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States heard the case and held the Louisiana segregation statute constitutional. Speaking for a seven-man majority, Brown wrote: "A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races --have no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races. Both the Plessy vs. Ferguson case and Tom Robinson’s case had aspects that made people question their views as to how black people should be treated in the court of law. Though there was a substantial case both times it seemed irrelevant in the decision. There was a big problem with racism back then. There was also a lot of segregation back then as well. There was also a problem with how black people were