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AP U.S. History Exam 1.32 183 Views
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Description:
Take a look at this sweet question about Equal rights. ...Oh. It's not about the sweetener? Gotcha. Check it out anyway and see if you can find out which amendment was addressed in the Plessy v. Ferguson case.
Transcript
- 00:00
[ musical flourish ]
- 00:03
And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by equal protection,
- 00:07
Sweet N Low's least favorite part of the Sugar Act.
- 00:10
All right, here's the excerpt.
- 00:11
[ mumbles ]
Full Transcript
- 00:17
All right, and the question:
- 00:18
Which Constitutional amendment was addressed in
- 00:21
the Plessy v. Ferguson case?
- 00:23
And here are your potential answers.
- 00:27
Supreme court cases like Plessy v. Ferguson showed that
- 00:30
even after a civil war and changes to the Constitution,
- 00:33
African Americans still had a long way to go for some
- 00:36
not-so-separate equality.
- 00:38
Well, in Plessy v. Ferguson, were lawyers arguing
- 00:41
over rights outlined in A - the First Amendment?
- 00:44
Well, Homer Plessy claimed that his rights were
- 00:46
violated when a conductor asked him to sit in a segregated
- 00:49
railroad car. But the First Amendment?
- 00:52
Well, that guarantees freedom of religion, speech,
- 00:54
press, assembly, and petition.
- 00:57
And while we're on the Bill of Rights, the Fifth Amendment
- 00:59
guarantees the right to due process of law.
- 01:02
Well, in this case, all of these rights are wrong.
- 01:05
Did Plessy v. Ferguson concern a possible violation of
- 01:08
D - the Fifteenth Amendment?
- 01:10
Well, the Fifteenth Amendment prohibits the federal government
- 01:13
from denying a citizen the right to vote
- 01:15
based on race. So that prohibits D, as well.
- 01:17
Which means that the Plessy v. Ferguson case addressed
- 01:20
C - the Fourteenth Amendment.
- 01:22
Well, the Fourteenth Amendment not only guaranteed citizenship for slaves,
- 01:25
it also afforded them equal protection under the law.
- 01:28
Plessy's lawyers argued that being forced to sit
- 01:30
in a separate railroad car violated Plessy's right to that
- 01:34
equal protection.
- 01:35
The Supreme Court, however, disagreed, claiming that so long
- 01:38
as the cars were separate but equal,
- 01:40
everything was hunky dory. So C is the correct answer.
- 01:43
Sixty years later, Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned
- 01:46
by Brown v. Board of Education, which
- 01:48
schooled the country on just how unequal that
- 01:51
"separate but equal" business really was.
- 01:55
[ children giggling ]
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