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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. 

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English Language

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 ]

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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