Question

Read the excerpt from the US Supreme court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

The statute of Louisiana, acts of 1890, c. 111, requiring railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in that State, to provide equal, but separate, accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations; and providing that no person shall be permitted to occupy seats in coaches other than the ones assigned to them, on account of the race they belong to; and requiring the officer of the passenger train to assign each passenger to the coach or compartment assigned for the race to which he or she belong; and imposing fines or imprisonment upon passengers insisting on going into a coach or compartment other than the one set aide for the race to which he or she belongs; and conferring upon officers of the train power to refuse to carry on the train passengers refusing to occupy the coach or compartment assigned to them, and exempting the railway company from liability for such refusal, are not in conflict with the provisions either of the Thirteenth Amendment or of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Which best explains why the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson was unconstitutional?
The Supreme Court’s ruling allowed states to deny equal protection to any person within its jurisdiction.
Since the 14th Amendment did not make concessions for people born outside the US, the Supreme Court’s decision could not be applied.
The Supreme Court’s decision gave individual states the freedom to make their own laws in relation to non-whites.
Since segregation laws did not provide equal protections or liberties to non-whites, the ruling was not consistent with the 14th Amendment.

Answer 1

The Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson was unconstitutional because since segregation laws did not provide equal protections or liberties to non-whites, the ruling was not consistent with the 14th Amendment.

In Plessy v. Ferguson's case in 1896, America's Supreme Court established that as long as there was equality, racially separated facilities were not unconstitutional. According to the Court, segregation did not discriminate.

But actually, the separate facilities granted to African Americans were infrequently equal. Normally they were far from being equal, or were completely inexistent.

Distribution of education budget in Florida, for example, was extremely different depending on the race: whereas white people counted on a budget of over 70 million dolars for their schools, libraries, and more, black people counted on a budget of less than 5 million. They teached and learned in churchs, huts, and shelters without bathrooms, water supply, desks or chalkboards.

This principle of "separate but equal" was only employed to reaffirm white majority supremacy over black minority, and was eventually abandoned in 1954.