Essays on Plessy v. Ferguson

Thurgood MarshallIntroductionOn June 17, 1991, a pivotal era in the history of the United States Supreme Court, and indeed United States history as a whole came to an end with the retirement from the court of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Having served to the age of 82 is remarkable enough, but what makes Marshall’s nearly 3…

The Declaration of Independence states that “All men are created equal,” however, this statement wasn’t necessarily true in the United States until after the Civil War. After the Civil War, in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified and finally put an end to slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment strengthened the rights of newly freed slaves by…

The landmark unanimous ruling in Brown v. Board of Education overturned the “separate but equal” precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson. With a ruling of 8-1, the Plessy v. Ferguson Court purported that as long as the facilities that the two races occupied were equal in quality and accommodations, then it was constitutionally permissible for…