Brocco PaganoHistory 162-015 March 2014Midterm Exam EssayBetween the late 1800s and the mid-1900s, the United States was tainted by the stain of the slavery era, especially in southern states. There were great prejudices against blacks and the white majority managed to prevent them from exercising their fundamental rights, in particular the right to vote and the right to education. When people began to question why there should be this segregation within society, they took the issue to the United States Supreme Court. These conflicts led to the Supreme Court cases, Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, two of the most influential court cases in U.S. history. The first of the major cases to reach the Supreme Court was Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The case began because Homer Plessy, who is one-eighth black, sat in a section of a train in Louisiana. This raised the question of the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, whether it was created to punish the South for the Civil War (The Dark Knights, Feb. 4). The court's majority opinion was that the Fourteenth Amendment states that all are equal before the law. Since whites used a “separate but equal” policy, the Fourteenth Amendment is not violated because the races are still equal under the law (The Dark Knights, Feb. 4). The only Supreme Court justice to disagree with this is Justice John Marshal Harlan, so he dissented. He argued that if the United States allows people to be separated based on skin color, then it will spread to other areas, such as religion (#Team Swarts Feb. 4). Despite Judge Harlan's opinion, the Supreme Court decided that it was constitutional to separate the races as long as... the Knights of the Paper Ark. 2014. “Plessy v. Ferguson” MyCourses, February 4. Accessed March 4, 2014. https://mycourses.geneseo.edu/section/default.asp?id=201401-50547-HIST-162-01 #Team Swarts. 2014. “One Man's Dissent” MyCourses, February 4. Accessed March 4, 2014. https://mycourses.geneseo.edu/section/default.asp?id=201401-50547-HIST-162-01 Swarts' Courts. 2014. “Brown vs Board of Education” MyCourses, February 18, 2014. Accessed March 4, 2014. https://mycourses.geneseo.edu/section/default.asp?id=201401-50547-HIST-162-01The Dark Knights. 2014. “Brown v. Board of Education” MyCourses, February 11, 2014. Accessed March 4, 2014. https://mycourses.geneseo.edu/section/default.asp?id=201401-50547-HIST-162-01Professor Swart. 2014 “The Era of Jim Crow” MyCourses, February 11, 2014. Accessed March 4, 2014. https://mycourses.geneseo.edu/section/default.asp?id=201401-50547-HIST-162-01