Homer Plessy, a legally African American citizen from New Orleans, LA, challenged status quo when he sat in a train car specifically designated for white citizens (Plessy v. Ferguson 1896). The laws that forbid him from sitting in the white citizens' train car were known as the Jim Crow laws. First created in 1877 and named after a derogatory blackface character, the Jim Crow laws segregated black and white citizens in all aspects of life. For example, the laws designated specific drinking fountains for blacks and whites and restricted them from attending the same schools. After Homer Plessy was arrested, his trial quickly rose to the Supreme Court in 1896. In the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson case, the justices ruled it constitutional to segregate …show more content…
One of the goals of the Jim Crow laws was to deny blacks an education that would teach them to challenge inequality and white superiority. While that goal ultimately failed when riots and trials began, the Jim Crow laws planted the seed for African American difficulty by endorsing segregation in the education system. All around the South, in the early twentieth century, laws were enforced that were similar to a law in Missouri declaring that, “Separate free schools shall be established for the education of children of African descent; and it shall be unlawful for any colored child to attend any white school, or any white child to attend a colored school” (Separate Is Not Equal). The separated schools were said to be equal under the Jim Crow laws, but African American students were forced to attend underfunded schools with inadequate learning facilities. Unfortunately, the textbooks in black schools were hand-me-downs from white schools, the teachers were under-qualified and the schools themselves were ramshackle and poverty-stricken. At the time, the nation spent ten times as much money educating a white student as an African American student (Blue Tb page