Homer Plessy bought a first-class ticket in 1892 for a trip that he was going to go on in Lousiana. Homer settled into the coach section for whites. The conductor told Homer Plessy to move to a different coach because the conductor thought Plessy was not white. He refused and the conductor threw him off the train and put him into a jail cell.
Is it ethically and morally right to put Homer Plessy in jail for just simply sitting in one of the coaches with white passengers on a train? I don’t think so! Plessy bought a ticket for a first-class coach seat on a train in good faith. That means the seller’s action on behalf of the train sold a ticket that should have been honored by the train. He was kicked out of the train simply because of the conductor’s poor ethics and morals. Keeping black people away from white people is a violation of our civil rights. Our Constitution is ethically color blind. A state could not constitutionally debrief citizens of their rights based on their races. Plessy should be treated as equal as a white passager on a coach’s train.
The conductor apparently used physical force to throw Plessy off the train. While Plessy didn't use any physical force on the conductor, therefore, the conductor should be charged with assault. Furthermore, the conductor disrupted the train which resulted in the peace and tranquility of other passengers’ trips. Pleesy didn’t deserve to be in jail because any crime that he had committed on the train didn't have victims. No one was ropped, hurt, etc.
When Plessy stepped into the car and the conductor kicked him out, (Separate Car Act) his rights were violated within the 13th Amendment which was the banning on slavery as well as the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment. The trains that were racially segregated that were deemed as separate, but equal cars were a complete farce. It makes no ethical sense for a person to get a nicer more sophisticated seat based on race which meant that the “Jim Crow” coach full of dark-skinned individuals were being treated like slaves. The Lousiana law is unconstitutional.
(Homer Plessy looks like a white passenger)
There was no definition of Caucasian so a reasonable ethical person would say 7/8 Caucasian which Homar was is close enough to a white individual. 1/8 means one of eight great grandparents were black and seven out of eight great grandparents were Caucasian. It makes no ethical sense to put Plessy in jail when he did not commit any crime of violence to the passengers on board. There was no victim in this crime therefore Homer Plessy did not deserve criminal punishment because no one was impacted, hurt, or taken advantage of. That is unethical. Plessy has his own 1st Amendment rights which should trump other rights that produce segregation because they are unethical in our society.
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