The Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) is widely known for having established the precedent of "separate but equal." The case originated in Louisiana and was a direct challenge to the separate passenger cars that were designated for the black and white races. The Supreme Court, in this case, upheld the right of Louisiana to separate the races and "this decision provided the legal foundation to justify many other actions by state and local governments to socially separate blacks and whites" (Zimmerman, 1997, 1). It was not until the famous Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954 that the highest court in the land outlawed the principal of segregation and the concept of "separate but equal."
             Homer Plessy was part of a test case to challenge the separate car facilities in Louisiana. He was only one eighth African descent and appeared to be white. Despite his predominantly white appearance, he was arrested for sitting in a white car and refusing to "vacate said coach, and occupy another seat, in a coach assigned by said company for persons not of the white race, and for no other reason than that petitioner was of the colored race; that, upon petitioner's refusal to comply with such order, he was, with the aid of a police officer, forcibly ejected from said coach, and hurried off to, and imprisoned in, the parish jail of New Orleans" (Findlaw 1). The case went first to the Criminal District Court of the Parish of Orleans in State of Louisiana v. Plessy in 1892. That court ruled that the Separate Car Act was constitutional as long as the state made certain that equal facilities were provided. Later that same year, the Louisiana State Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutionality of the Separate Car Act and rejected Plessy's argument that he was only one eighth black and should not be subject to the law. With the belief that the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments had bee...