Category: Plessy Vs Ferguson

Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. The case stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for Black people. Rejecting Plessy’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated, the Supreme Court ruled that a law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between white people and Black people was not unconstitutional. As a result, restrictive Jim Crow legislation and separate public accommodations based on race became commonplace.

After the Compromise of 1877 led to the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, Democrats consolidated control of state legislatures throughout the region, effectively marking the end of Reconstruction.

Southern Black people saw the promise of equality under the law embodied by the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment to the Constitution receding quickly, and a return to disenfranchisement and other disadvantages as white supremacy reasserted itself across the South.

As historian C. Vann Woodward pointed out in a 1964 article about Plessy v. Ferguson, white and Black Southerners mixed relatively freely until the 1880s, when state legislatures passed the first laws requiring railroads to provide separate cars for “Negro” or “colored” passengers.

Florida became the first state to mandate segregated railroad cars in 1887, followed in quick succession by Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana and other states by the end of the century.

As Southern Black people witnessed with horror the dawn of the Jim Crow era, members of the Black community in New Orleans decided to mount a resistance.

At the heart of the case that became Plessy v. Ferguson was a law passed in Louisiana in 1890 “providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races.” It stipulated that all passenger railways had to provide these separate cars, which should be equal in facilities.

Homer Adolph Plessy, who agreed to be the plaintiff in the case aimed at testing the law’s constitutionality, was of mixed race; he described himself as “seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African blood.”

On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a ticket on a train from New Orleans bound for Covington, Louisiana, and took a vacant seat in a whites-only car. After refusing to leave the car at the conductor’s insistence, he was arrested and jailed.

Convicted by a New Orleans court of violating the 1890 law, Plessy filed a petition against the presiding judge, Hon. John H. Ferguson, claiming that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Over the next few years, segregation and Black disenfranchisement picked up pace in the South, and was more than tolerated by the North. Congress defeated a bill that would have given federal protection to elections in 1892, and nullified a number of Reconstruction laws on the books.

Then, on May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Plessy v. Ferguson. In declaring separate-but-equal facilities constitutional on intrastate railroads, the Court ruled that the protections of 14th Amendment applied only to political and civil rights (like voting and jury service), not “social rights” (sitting in the railroad car of your choice).

In its ruling, the Court denied that segregated railroad cars for Black people were necessarily inferior. “We consider the underlying fallacy of [Plessy’s] argument,” Justice Henry Brown wrote, “to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.”

Alone in the minority was Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former slaveholder from Kentucky. Harlan had opposed emancipation and civil rights for freed slaves during the Reconstruction era – but changed his position due to his outrage over the actions of white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

Harlan argued in his dissent that segregation ran counter to the constitutional principle of equality under the law: “The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race while they are on a public highway is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution,” he wrote. “It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.”

The Plessy v. Ferguson verdict enshrined the doctrine of “separate but equal” as a constitutional justification for segregation, ensuring the survival of the Jim Crow South for the next half-century.

Intrastate railroads were among many segregated public facilities the verdict sanctioned; others included buses, hotels, theaters, swimming pools and schools. By the time of the 1899 case Cummings v. Board of Education, even Harlan appeared to agree that segregated public schools did not violate the Constitution.

It would not be until the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, at the dawn of the civil rights movement, that the majority of the Supreme Court would essentially concur with Harlan’s opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson..

Writing the majority opinion in that 1954 case, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that “the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place” in public education, calling segregated schools “inherently unequal,” and declaring that the plaintiffs in the Brown case were being “deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”

The Equal Protection clause states that it will not “…. [D]eny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The clause is violated when someone is treated differently due to their race, ethnicity, or protected class.

Throughout history, the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause has been used to strike down state laws that promote inequality and discrimination. For instance, in Loving v. Virginia, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals held that a state law that prohibited interracial marriage did not violate the Equal Protection Clause because all races were being treated the same as their own race. After realizing the insidious discrimination, under the same clause the United States Supreme Court invalidated the state law on the basis of race discrimination.

Although the purpose of the Equal Protection Clause is to protect United States citizens, the Court has varied opinions when deciding cases based on the color of one’s skin. In 1896, the Court in Plessy v. Ferguson notoriously established the “separate but equal “doctrine, holding that segregating United States citizens based solely on race was constitutional and not a violation of the Equal Protection clause. During the time of Plessy, race segregation was prevalent, and laws that discriminated against African Americans, known as Jim Crow Laws, were commonly enforced.

Homer Plessy, a man who was one-eighth black and seven-eighth white, appeared to the human eye to be white. Plessy bought a train ticket and attempted to board the white-only bus, where he was then arrested for violating the statute that prohibited racial commingling. Plessy brought the case to the Supreme Court where he argued that the Equal Protection Clause protected him from discrimination based on the color of his skin and that he was deprived of due process.” Plessy’s lawyer, Albion Tourgée, fought hard for Plessy and the notion of equality but was ultimately defeated by the court’s holding. The Court held that the racial segregation on the train did not deprive Mr. Plessy, nor any African American, of due process because Plessy’s race as a one-eighth black man did not “properly arise on the record.” The Court’s holding enabled white privilege to continue, allowing Jim Crow laws to discriminate and treat African Americans as subordinates to white persons.

Almost sixty years after the decision of Plessy, African American parents argued that segregation in public schools was a deprivation of the Equal Protection clause. The plaintiff’s argument was focused on the adverse result of racial segregation in the classroom, despite the equality in ‘tangible’ things inside the classroom. The Court held that it was a deprivation of Equal Protection to segregate children based solely on their race, identifying the detriment of segregating children. The Court found that separating white children from African American children in the classroom resulted in African American children feeling defeated and inferior, causing a lack of motivation in the classroom and negatively impacting a child’s grades and ability to learn.

Although “separate but equal”, the proposition held constitutional in Plessy was overturned in Brown, and the stigma of race and segregation continues to exist today. Race and wealth are intertwined. Unlike race which is a fundamental right triggering strict scrutiny, rational basis review is the test used to determine the legitimacy of a law regarding wealth. And although it has been extensively argued that a person’s wealth should be treated as a suspect group- requiring a heightened level of scrutiny, a person’s socioeconomic class is usually found to be constitutional under the lenient rational basis review. The burden in a rational basis review is on the plaintiff, not the government, and as long as a court decides there is any merit to the law imposed, a law discriminating against a person based on her wealth will be upheld.

The document “Growing Up Black in the South: A Remembrance, 1977” is a source from My Soul Is Rested which was written by Howell Raines who was born on February 5, 1943, in Birmingham, Alabama, is an American journalist, editor, and writer. My Soul Is Rested is a book that contains oral history regarding about American Civil Rights Movement, which includes interviews with people who struggled with racial segregation in the South. “Growing Up Black in the South: A Remembrance, 1977 was written during a “separate but equal” time, and it describes and provides evidence of how blacks were treated compared to whites from a blacks point of view.

America passed the 14th amendment on July 28, 1868, during the Radical Reconstruction, granting citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States”. Slaves who were freed after the Civil War were granted citizenship and guaranteed “equal protection of laws”. However, how blacks were treated did not differ much from the past. Facilities and services white enjoyed were introduced to blacks, but those weren’t shared. Whites and blacks had separate water fountains, buses, railroad cars, schools, and much more. The case Plessy vs. Ferguson was about Plessy who was ⅛ black purchasing a railroad car ticket for the white to Louisiana announcing that he was black but refusing to move to the car for blacks. As a result, he got arrested for violating the Separate Car Act. Plessy filed a petition against Judge Ferguson claiming the act violated the 14th amendment; however, the Supreme Court ruled that having separate accommodations is not violating the 14th amendment because the 14th amendment protects legal equality, not social equality. This case established a “separate but equal” doctrine and legalized segregation and discrimination against black. Crisis in Little Rock explains how black students were discriminated against and treated badly when they were introduced to an all-white school as a step toward desegregation.

Content:

“Separate but equal” doctrine allowed whites to treat blacks harshly as it was during slavery time, and segregation and discrimination were prevalent. In Georgia, black farmers couldn’t plant tobacco because having tobacco plantations allowed farmers to earn a lot of money. “White people concoct debts as you get in jail, the sheriff would let you out, and the white men tell the sheriff to tell he paid a hundred dollars for you, but you don’t need to worry as long as you stay in his farm and work.” Blacks could not plant what they wanted to, if blacks who worked for white men run away, white men would come to get them and take them back to work as it was during slavery time. Even though blacks worked hard, they could not earn high job options, they either died in poverty or just as middle-class men. “Blacks born and worked on the Wonnie Miller farm died in poverty, and they worked like slaves. Mr. Wonnie never really worked, and died a millionaire.” Blacks were the ones who worked and flourished the plantation, but all the rewards were given to the white. Blacks who worked hard on the plantation were never able to become rich; however, whites who never really worked but owned plantations easily became rich for generations. “ I had more publication than all the white guys put together…and I thought sure they’d make me the assistant chief because I thought they had accepted me as a scientist. And they gave the job to a white girl who knew very little chemistry.” Even though blacks try harder than whites, highly educated jobs were never given to blacks, and blacks were segregated from the white world. “ I and my two sons walked into this drugstore, it had a long lunch counter and these white kids were sittin’ on these stools, spinnin’ around, eatin’ hot dogs and drinkin’ Co-cola. My boys started askin’ me, “Daddy, let’s get a sandwich and a Coke.” I said, “Naw, you cain’t have a Coke and sandwich.” One of ‘’them started cryin’. And I said, “ Well, you know I’m gonna take you back home and Moma’ll fix you a hot dog and give you Coke”, and made a promise that I’d bring ’em back someday.” He could not say the truth about why they can’t get sandwiches and coke to eat sitting down on the stools because he did not want his kids to feel the segregation since they were young. However, there were hopeful signs of desegregation in the Crisis of Little Rock. US Supreme Court believed that segregation was unconditional, supporting desegregation, Eisenhower introduced nine black kids to an all-white school and helped nine black students to attend Arkansas Central High School with the protection of the federal troops. At first, kids were getting bullied, shout out, and white mobs were protesting outside the school, as time passed, white kids offered a black kid who was sitting alone in the cafeteria to join them. He should have bought a sandwich and coke for his children and joined seats with the white kids because white kids might have been supporting desegregation and have been friendly. If you are scared and never try something new, you will never know the outcome.

Significance:

The significance of Growing Black in the South is that it shows how hard the country worked to recognize rights and give protection for blacks during Radical Reconstruction with the 14th amendment, but the country got reversed by Plessy vs. Ferguson because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that 14th amendment was to protect the blacks for legal equality, not for social rights, and that increased cruelty of how whites treated the blacks. Jim Crow law was created after Plessy v. Ferguson legalizing segregation and discrimination against blacks, blacks were given separate facilities and services from whites. This document shows how blacks struggled during the Civil Rights Movement and tells even though blacks work harder than whites to earn money or to gain educated jobs, they were never rewarded the same but less than the whites. Living in America required blacks way more effort than whites. NAACP claimed that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional which led to the U.S. Supreme Court outlawing the governments to impose segregation in public schools introducing Little Rock Nine to Arkansas Central High School, Martin Luther King leading Montgomery Bus Boycott after Rosa Parks got arrested for refusing to give up her seat to the white led to the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that public transportation segregation was unconstitutional and illegal. Blacks were Americans by citizenship but were never viewed equally as White Americans socially during “separate but equal” time. It shows how hard blacks fought to gain equal meaning of Americans as whites and to have racial equality. This document describes the steps of how blacks fought for desegregation as Americans.

Throughout black people’s progression over 100 years, black groups played vital roles in order to achieve justice needed for their causes; some consisted of individuals with communities backing their ideas, such as Booker T Washington and his ‘respect earned for equality’ mandate, then later transforming into huge mass movements calling on the government for intervention for equal rights, namely Martin Luther’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SSLC) and Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE). In order to gain the inclusion that they desired, black groups ideas and mandates changed over the decades, reflecting the needs for the time that they were presented with. Starting from within the reconstruction era, with Booker T Washington and W.E.B Du Bois first spreading their grievances and the solutions they thought would enable black progression sueing the turbulant times they faced, with black people being free from slavery but withheld basic resepct under Jim Crow laws tormenting the south. Historians ‘Gardner Booker T’ and ‘Pero Dagbovi’ both commented on Booker T Washington’s ideas, Gardner commending Washington’s successes of the Alabama Institute and his moral ideas of earning respect from white counterparts, whereas Dagbovi opposed, signalling that respect didn’t need to be ‘earned’ based on ones skin colour. Once the ideas were established of how to go about progression, these groups grew into proper organisations like the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in order to actively change their situation, and used their status after 1930 within the legal framework of America. After gaining more through legality, such as the Plessy v Ferguson case, black groups moved into movements on great scales, mobilizing hundreds of people to protest for stronger equality throughout the 1950s and 60’s looking for a cultural change in America, some through peaceful protesting and others through defence and intimidation, such as the Black Panthers. Gaining rights took decades for black groups, and they evolved according to the society in which they inhabited, from introducing opposition in 1870 to Jim Crow laws through the spreading of ideas and raising awareness of inequalities, adapting eventually in 1960 by mobilising thousands of people who demanded change after over 100 years of oppression. (360)

The Jim Crow era established the way in which the course of American history regarding Black people’s civil rights vastly opened doors to evoke discussion among different communities and cultures from Ghettos to white liberals on the important issues that would be fought for in years to come. During this time of history, after the failed attempt of reconstruction, segregation soured through the south and led the way to the diminishment of any ‘fair’ laws passed in the era of reconstruction. In the early 19th century two men dominated the discussion; W.E.B Du Bois and Booker T Washington. Both strong men believed in the advancement of African Americans into American society, but the course in which they thought was to be taken was significantly different, and it was this debate that formed the basis for the discussions years later.

Booker T Washington established his position in southern society through his beliefs that black people did not need to fight for rights or freedoms and instead passively allow segregation and disenfranchisement, in exchange for basic education and economic opportunities. Du Bois on the other hand opposed this method greatly, being a firm believer in actively fighting for better opportunities and not suppressing to white rule. The ways in which the different methods were expected to be executed differed too, with Booker T developing the Tuskegee institute and Du Bois setting up the Niagara movement. The Tuskegee Institute was founded on the basis that in order for African Americans to gain respect from white people, they needed to earn it. Training in agriculture and industry was given specifically to advance economic progress; this, in Booker T’s eyes, therefore enabled white people to see that African Americans were not as intellectually inferior as once thought and thus be accepted into wider society, not to be forced; ‘that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.’ Often he also used himself as an example of a Black man who ‘gained’ respect and acceptance into wider society, such as his closeness to Theoadore Roosevelt. Though his closeness to President Roosevelt and the ‘respect’ Washington received could be argued, as no matter how polite and courteous or how wealthy a black man was, they were always viewed as inferior to their ‘superiors’. In any respect, Washington gained a national reputation as a ‘reasonable’ black man, and he encouraged students within the Tuskegee institute to mirror his reasonability in order to gain merit. Washington also broke ground with his efforts on The Atlanta Compromise, a speech declaring that the Reconstruction era was too drastic in its changes and that racial cooperation would be the only benefit. He believed that social segregation and submitting to white rule in exchange for basic education and economic advances was the way forward to achieve cooperation. The speech was a success in the Southern Whites’ eyes and he was applauded for his passivity.

Washington’s idea of separate but equal convention towards black rights can be seen being supported elsewhere, particularly in 1896, the Supreme Court’s ruling of ‘Plessy vs Ferguson’. This was the first major case looking into the meaning of the 14th Amendment, whereby all states must comply with equal protection under all the law. The ruling allowed under the constitution for racial segregation and for public places to have separate but allegedly equal facilities. Paving the way for racial segregation for years to come, Washingtons seperate but equal docterine played a huge role in Americas history towards segregated civil rights, and was a huge factor in later fights for equal civil rights without segregation.

Opposingly, despite his early agreement towards Washington, Du Bois started to disapprove of his beliefs to live passively to segregation and called for full political, civil and social rights for African Americans. Du Bois was openly against The Atlanta compromise and believed that their society should engage in active civil rights and not passively submit under white rule. Du Bois was quoted saying that ‘one could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved’. Du Bois realized that ‘the cure wasn’t simply telling people the truth, it was inducing them to act on the truth’. This next act would be known as the Niagara Movement, an organization that would be known as the predecessor of the NAACP. The Niagara movement made up many scholars that, like Du Bois, believed that change could only be made with a more thorough and aggressive stance to fight against racism, and that Washington’s advancements towards equality were slow moving and ineffective. The Niagara movement focused on the refusal to allow African Americans to be seen as inferior and submissive. Though short lived, this movement paved the way for ideas other than Washington’s, and eventually led to the nationally recognized group NAACP, that allowed black and white members against racism to join.

Historians; Booker T Gardner wrote in support of Washington’s efforts of uplifting African American men through education, ‘Washington ranks the most influential leaders of American education… He founded the Institute at Alabama.’ Washington’s work on the Institute was due to the basis of his outlook on African Americans standing and how they should go about gaining equal rights. Gardner praises Washington in his education style, ‘Tuskegee became an outstanding education institution in the fields of industrial and household arts, agriculture…etc’ whereby he saw education as a tool to gain respect from the white population in order to achieve equality. Education in Washington’s era when the Tuskegee was set up in 1881 for African Americans was hugely lacking, for males and even worse females, therefore the Tuskegee Institute was groundbreaking in allowing people of colour to learn in a safe environment without the bias that they would if they ever got the opportunity, which was unlikely, to go to a white school.

Pero Gaglo Dagbovie on the other hand instead supports protest, ‘celebrating folks who refused to go along and get along, refused to smile and take the payola that Washington was offering’; here we can see that Dagbovie is celebrating protesting against unfair and unequal societal expectations of the early 1900’s and refused to celebrate Washington’s subjection to White rule. He specifically references how the ‘Niagara Movement’ was the beginning of protest, meaning that Dagbovie supports Du Bois, opposition of Washington and founder of the movement. Dagbovie supports those that refused to be subjected to the idea that black men needed to gain respect for their white counterparts and instead protest for fairer equality.

Gardner wrote his praise for Washington in 1975, just a mere few years after full emancipation for African Americans, therefore his accounts of Tuskegee and its impacts may have been in verbal circulation in society at the time. His account could well be the reflection of admiration around Washington’s efforts in contribution to educating young black men before anyone else did. Dagbovies accounts were written in 2007, with benefits of hindsight on his side. Dagbovie had much better access to researching both Washington and Du Bois with the help of the internet, more research material and other uncovered sources that were found after Gardners 1975. Dagbovies hindsight will have allowed him to look at civil rights from a bigger perspective and get a more well rounded conclusion without bias from verbal accounts.

The fight between DuBois and Washington and their arguments dominated the time period in which they stood, stirring ideas and shifting political boundaries. Both men and their supporters were two opposing black groups; no matter how different each argument was, they were both extremely important for the beginnings of civil rights, as they were challenging the status quo and providing people with opportunities to discuss how to achieve equality. (1305)

Due to the efforts of Du Bois and Washington in raising the important issues and discussions needed towards race, the new era in black groups was transformed from the small Niagara movement to the interacial civil right group the NAACP. The springfield riots of 1908 acted as a catalyst and a last straw for many people within Illanois and beyond. The forming of the NAACP was due to white liberals such as Mary White Ovington being appalled by lynching, paticularily during the springfeild riots, so they sought out prominant Americans that included W.E.B. Du Bois to form their own civil rights organization. Little did they know that this organization would fight, and win, many legal battles in the future that made huge leaps towards the civil rights movement. Throughout its years the NAACP focused on different areas for change, such as antilynching legislation, education and participation in voting. The NAACP’s first victory was Guin vs states against the ‘grandfather clause’. This clause allowed illiterate white men to vote if their grandfathers had the right years before, whilst black people who did not have a father eligible to vote in 1866 had to take a literacy test. Due to African Americans’ positions in 1833, very few black men were allowed to vote, therefore hindering most black Americans’ chances of voting in 1908. This hindrance was known nationally and caused the NAACP to spring into action against the unfair clause and to set it right. This legal battle, whereby the Supreme court ruled the clause to be unconstitutional against the 15th Amendment, helped the NAACP establish legal advocacy and increased their status among growing numbers of activists. Another battle in the NAACPs early history was the boycotting of ‘A Birth of a Nation’ which positively looked at the Ku Klux Klan and followed racial stereotypes. Although this boycott did not take off, it again helped increase their status nationally. Many more legal battles followed, and membership grew significantly, from 9,000 in 1917 to 90,000 in 1919, fighting the battle ground within the legal system to eliminate racial prejudice.

Next, the NAACP battleground focused on their antilynching campaign. In 1916 a committee was founded for antilynching legislation in particular and in 1917 the first mass demonstration for African American equality was organised by the NAACP in New York, where 10,000 people attended to silently protest against antilynching. By 1918, the group helped persuade President Woodrow Wilson to condemn lynching.

But it was not until after 1940 that the NAACPs role was most pivotal; during the civil flights era. The NAACPs most famous legal battle would have to be the landmark ‘Brown vs Board of education of topeka’, outlawing segregation in schools, but it also allowed wider context in reference to segregation in all settings. Overturning the Plessy vs Ferguson ruling of separate but equal, Thurgood Marshall, a lawyer for the NAACP, sought to disallow segregation in schools, arguing segregation violated the 14th Amendment. Many cases throughout the country regarding the same questions of segregation in education were brought up nationally, and eventually they were combined. Linda Brown’s case was at the forefront of the list, being denied entry, like many, from schools nearby and was forced to travel miles away to predominantly black schools. Thurgood Marshall argued that the separate but equal schools were not actually equal, with white schools facilities being of much better quality than separate and ‘equal’ black schools. The supreme court was deeply divided, but eventually ruled that ‘separate educational facilities are inherently unequal’ and that the black students were deprived of the equal protections of the law of the 14th. Unsurprisingly this court ruling helped chip away at racism in society by exacting integration within schools and it inspired the marches that happened soon after calling for outlawing all segregation. (if needed more wordcount talk about another famous case here)

The black group of the NAACP played a remarkable role in the civil rights movement, using the institutions of America and calling on the constitution to call for equal rights. Unlike their previous groups of Dubois and Washington whereby making discussion about equality was the goal, the NAACP was the change America needed to progress, by using the legal systems in place to further black rights. (713)

After the 1950s the civil rights movement started to become bigger, and the groups that composed this time period and into the 1960s focused on mass movements, boycotts and primarily active action in order to stand up for rights. Groups that were banded together during this time were very different but all had priorities in using the power of the people in order to bring about change. Groups such as Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Martin Luther King’s Southern Cristian Leadership Conference (SCLC) approached the civil rights movement with words, following the steps of Gandhi with his non-violence and love. Both groups organised and participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, attempting to desegregate busses and other public spaces such as waiting rooms in a non violent way. The bus boycott lasted over a year, and had large backlashes for black people across Montgomery- violent attacks increased and the all loving approach that both CORE and King adopted was more crucial than ever. The Supreme Court ruled that the segregation on buses was unconstitutional in 1556, proving to doubtful onlookers that the nonviolence approach could work.

Opposingly to CORE and SSLC, a group named the black panthers approached gaining equality in a much different way, a huge change in direction from the peaceful protesting of Martin Luther King. The Black Panther party was originally made for self-defense, and later transformed into a party that oversaw the treatment of how black peoples negative interactions with police and sought to stop any mistreatment. Although quite a minority group with at its height just over 2000 members, The Black Panthers impact ripples throughout America’s states and their reputation was echoed far and wide. The group’s reputation across America, particularly in White communities was that of fear; often portrayed as a gang, many people saw the Black Panthers for their controversies, namely the interactions of violence with the police. An example of this is the founder of the Black Panthers Huey Newton being convicted of manslaughter and sentenced for 15 years in prison for the murder of a police officer. The Black Panthers aggressive way of protest and the assertiveness to their methods scared many white people and caused the media to demonize the group in many cases. Some of this demonization of the group due to their controversial violent tactics approach to protest is still seen today.

The juxtaposition of both the peaceful protesting groups of the 50’s and 60’s combined with the persistence for aggression by the Black Panthers gave the participants of the civil rights movement the freedom to choose which route they believed to be the best form of protest to enable civil rights and it shows clearly the change in which protest had converted even within the same time period. Movements and protesting show clearly the change from 1860s America, whereby protest to inequality was only presented within ideas and discussion to figure out the path for later civil rights, compared to the mass movements and demands for government intervention.