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Analysis of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka On June 7, 1892 a man named Homer Adolph Plessy was arrested and jailed for refusing to leave the “White” section of an East Louisiana Railroad train. Although Plessy was only one-eighths black, under Louisiana law he was considered black and, therefore, required to sit in the “Colored” section. The punishment for breaking this law, the Separate Car Act, was a fine of twenty-five dollars or twenty days in jail. Plessy went to court and argued, in Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Louisiana, that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. The judge hearing the case was John Howard Ferguson, who had recently ruled that the Separate Car Act was unconstitutional if the train was traveling through different states. However, in Plessy’s case, he decided that the state had the right to segregate the trains that operated in Louisiana only. Therefore, Plessy was found guilty.
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