Wormser, Richard. "Jim Crow Stories." The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. Pbs. Web. 1 Feb. 2016. <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_plessy.html>
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal. The decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1 with the majority opinion written by Justice Henry Billings Brown and the dissent written by Justice John Marshall Harlan. The case of Plessy vs. Ferguson started when a 30-year-old colored shoemaker named Homer Plessy was put in jail for sitting in the white car of the East Louisiana Railroad on June 7, 1892. Even though Plessy was only one-eighths black and seven-eighths white, he was considered black by Louisiana law. plessy didn’t like this idea, and so he went to court and argued in the case of Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Lousiana that the Separate Car Act, which forced segregation of train cars, violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment was made in order to abolish slavery, while the object of the Fourteenth Amendment was to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law. The name of "furguson" was given to the case because the judge at the trial was named John Howard Ferguson.
Judge Ferguson had previously declared that the Separate Car Act was unconstitutional on trains that traveled through several states, but he ruled that within the state, the state government could choose to regulate the railroad companies that operate within their respective state. The ruling was that the judge found Plessy guilty of refusing to leave the white car. Plessy proceeded to appeal to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, which also found him guilty. In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States heard Plessy’s case and found him guilty once again. My view on this particular case sides with Plessy rather than Ferguson. I believe in total equality and the idea of no difference between fellow human beings. There should be no distinction made between that which is for the white man, and that which is for the black man. Public institutions should be used by everyone together, and the act of riding a train car should not be a racial matter. I also agree that this segregation was a violation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendment in that it didn’t promote the idea of equality among the races that the amendments were made for.
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969) was a decision by the United States Supreme Court that defined the constitutional rights of students in U.S. public schools. The Tinker test is still used by courts today to determine whether a school's disciplinary actions violate students' First Amendment rights. Tinker V. Des Moines was a very controversial case. In December 1965, a group of adults and students in Des Moines including 15 year old John Tinker, his sister Mary Beth, their friend Christopher Eckhardt, and their parents had held a meeting at the Eckhardt home. The group determined to publicize their objections to the hostilities in Vietnam and their support for a truce by wearing black armbands and fasting during the holiday season. Upon learning of their intentions, and fearing that the armbands would provoke disturbances, the principals of Des Moines School district decided that all students wearing the armbands be asked to remove them or face suspension, because the school had adopted a new policy that any student wearing an armband would be asked to remove it, and if not they would be removed from school. When the Tinkers and Christopher wore these armbands to school they were asked to remove them. They refused and they were suspended from school until they returned to school without the armbands.
