Mock Trial - Plessy v. Ferguson

 In 1892, a 30-year-old shoemaker named Homer Plessy bought a first-class ticket in New Orleans and sat down in a railroad car reserved for white passengers. 

He knew exactly what would happen next. His seat was not an accident. It was a carefully planned act of constitutional protest.

Plessy was acting on behalf of the Comité des Citoyens, a group of Black and Creole professionals, activists, and veterans who had organized to challenge Louisiana’s Separate Car Act of 1890. 

The law required railways to provide “equal but separate” accommodations by race. 

The committee wanted a test case, and they chose their plaintiff deliberately. Plessy could pass as white, which would force the question of how, and by whom, race could be legally determined. 

They even arranged for a detective to make the arrest, ensuring the case would reach the courts.

The legal team was led by Albion Tourgée, a white author, former judge, and Union veteran who had spent years fighting for Reconstruction’s promises. 

Tourgée built his argument on the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Thirteenth ended slavery and, he argued, its lingering “badges.” 

The Fourteenth guaranteed all citizens the equal protection of the laws. A statute that sorted passengers by race, he contended, labeled one group as inferior and violated both.

Tourgée also raised a sharp due process argument. 

If a person’s reputation as a white man carried real social and economic value, then a conductor’s snap judgment could take that “property” away without a hearing. 

The law, in his view, handed enormous power to private individuals to define a citizen’s legal identity.

The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against Plessy in 1896 by a 7–1 vote. 

Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote that the Fourteenth Amendment could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based on color, and that segregation did not imply inferiority unless Black Americans chose to read it that way. 

In doing so, the Court gave constitutional cover to the doctrine of “separate but equal,” and in practice to decades of Jim Crow.

Justice John Marshall Harlan stood alone in dissent. 

His warning was prescient: he wrote that the Constitution is color-blind and knows no caste among citizens, and that the ruling would prove as damaging as the infamous Dred Scott decision. 

History bore him out. Segregation spread into schools, housing, workplaces, and voting, and the “equal” half of the doctrine was rarely honored.

It would take until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 for the Court to reject the principle that separate facilities could be equal, at least in public education. 

Even then, Plessy was never formally treated as a dead letter until later rulings extended Brown’s logic.

Plessy’s story endures because it shows how ordinary people use the law to demand change, even when they lose. 

The Comité des Citoyens knew the odds. 

They fought anyway, building a record and a moral argument that later generations, including the lawyers of the civil rights movement, would draw upon.

Video Reflection - Reconstruction

Reconstruction as a new beginning for America, showing Uncle Sam shaking hands with a formerly enslaved Black man to symbolize the hope for freedom, equality, and unity after the Civil War.

 Reconstruction was one of the most important periods in American history because it represented an opportunity for the United States to finally live up to its promise of freedom and equality.

 After the Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, slavery was coming to an end. 

However, the country still had to figure out what freedom would mean for formerly enslaved African Americans.

One important part of Reconstruction was the role Black Americans played in the Civil War. Approximately 180,000 Black men joined the Union military, strengthening the Union and changing the meaning of victory. 

Their service showed that African Americans were fighting for their freedom and deserved equal rights as citizens. Reconstruction was an opportunity for Black and white Americans to work toward a common cause, but that opportunity faced serious challenges.

After President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson became president. Johnson did not share Lincoln’s vision for protecting African Americans. 

Frederick Douglass, one of the most famous Black leaders in America, doubted Johnson’s commitment to civil rights. 

Johnson’s policies allowed many white Southerners to regain power, even though they had supported the Confederacy.

The Freedmen’s Bureau was established to help formerly enslaved people by providing assistance with education, employment, and other basic needs. 

General Oliver O. Howard also supported giving freed people access to land so they could become economically independent. 

However, these plans faced resistance, and many promises of land ownership were never fulfilled.

Violence also threatened the progress of Reconstruction. In Memphis in 1866, white mobs attacked Black residents, demonstrating how deeply racism and hostility remained in the South. 

These events showed that ending slavery did not automatically end discrimination or guarantee safety and equality.

Despite these challenges, the Fourteenth Amendment established citizenship and promised equal protection under the law. 

Reconstruction represented a chance to build a more just America, but its failures continued to affect the country long afterward.

Learning about Reconstruction helped me understand that freedom is more than ending slavery. It also requires equal rights, protection, opportunity, and justice. 

The collapse of Reconstruction reminds us that progress can be lost when people fail to protect the rights of others. 

America’s promise of freedom remains unfinished when equality is not available to everyone.

AI DISCLOSURE: This blogpost was made with a limited use of AI, we watched a video in class on the Reconstruction Era, I took very detailed and long notes on the  video in a word document. I put my notes into AI and asked the AI to help mold my notes into a professional blogpost. I strictly asked AI to withhold any other information and stick to only using the notes provided. 

Movie Reflection - Gone With The Wind

Scarlett and Mammy, sharing an intense moment. 

My entire class sat and watched the movie " Gone With the Wind" directed by Victor Fleming. While watching the movie it got me to thinking. A question kept circulating around my brain, how freedom can have a different meaning depending on the person and perspective it's coming from. 

The movie like all other movies has some sort of excitement, in order to keep the audience engaged, many movies use love and romance in order to keep readers engaged while also trying to teach a broader lesson. The movie shows a story about conditional and problematic love, while surviving life during the Civil War. 

While like many other movies, the film also shows how freedom is represented differently. An example of this is how Southern whites are struggling to protect what they think is normal, like traditions and independence and how enslaved African Americans are being minimized and pushed to the side. 

Even tho the movie talks and focuses a lot about emotions and relationships, it is very romanticized which does take away a lot of key points that people should be focusing on. Romanticizing the antebellum South is already hard enough and having it romanticized can just make it harder to take serious because there is no clear divide between factual storytelling and fantasy. 

One thing that I kept coming back to during the movie was how the characters acted towards each other. They showed many different things that I wasn't expecting originally. They showed friendship and loyalty, they cared for each other especially when times got hard. 

War changed them. 

I think that with all the destruction caused by war along with all the loss it led people to the debate of what really matters and what people are willing to do in order to get through. 

To survive. 

The movie also shows how the struggles that people are facing were more from the perspective of white southerners. 

In the movie, slavery is more of a background instead of being presented as a bigger issue. It is like the background music you put on when you clean. This leads to the idea that the story isn't over. It can't be completed without fully talking about the horrors of slavery and how it impacted such a large group of people within the nation. 

The movie shows that people can experience true feelings, like love and grief. They can experience these feelings while still reaping the benefits of a society that is clearly unjust and wrong. 

Scarlett O'Hara, is a perfect example of how someone transformed themselves within the movie. At the start, she is so infatuated with love, romance and social status that nothing else matters to her. As the war goes on and continues to destroy anything and everything in its path, she becomes more in touch with reality and she focuses on the things that really do matter. 

She takes on full responsibility for surviving and learning how she can be more helpful in life. 

In a way, the movie can suggest how hard time can shed light on power and might that society has taken away from women. 

Scarlett being independent is complicated at times because she is willing to anything to protect herself and what she wants. She is very resilient but it also creates more confusion of whether or not being able to survive can make someone a good person with good morals. 

Rhett Buttler who is a wealthy gambler who later becomes infatuated by Scarlett O'Hara after meeting her and eventually goes on to become her third husband, offers a different perspective. He sees and understands that war is not just for the honorable cause, but that it also has some sort of financial gain coming from it. 

He doesn't go off to war and join the confederate army, instead he stays behind doing anything in his power to improve his financial status and gain as much as he can no matter what it takes and who it hurts. 

The behavior shown by Rhett is not just how people acted during the time of the civil war. Even in today's society people are always looking for anyway to profit themselves. Even though earning money during a conflict is not necessarily bad or immoral, it is still wrong to abuse and mistreat peoples suffering just to gain something.

Gone with the Wind, shows how freedom and independence as well as control can take over peoples lives and control how they shape their own successes and futures. 

In my opinion the movies value isn't the romance and love that is shared between characters but it is the challenges that people face during war time and how war can affect everyone in so many different ways, not just the soldiers fighting in those wars.