[ 627 ] U.S. History GED ® TEST SOCIAL STUDIES FLASH REVIEW Use the excerpts below to answer the following three questions. The U.S. Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) focused on a man described as “of mixed descent, in the proportion of seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African blood; that the mixture of colored blood was not discernible in him . . . ” The man boarded a train in Louisiana and sat in “a vacant seat in a coach where passengers of the white race were accommodated . . . ” When asked to move to a different location on the train, a location designated for “persons not of the white race,” the man refused. A police officer forcibly removed him from the train, and the man was charged with a crime. Majority Opinion, delivered by Justice Brown . . . 2. By the fourteenth amendment, all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are made citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside; and the states are forbidden from making or enforcing any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. So far, then, as a conflict with the fourteenth amendment is concerned, the case reduces itself to the question whether the statute [law] of Louisiana is a reasonable regulation, and with respect to this there must necessarily be a large discretion on the part of the legislature. In determining the question of reasonableness, it is at liberty to act with reference to the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order. Gauged by this standard, we cannot say that a law which authorizes or even requires the separation of the two races in public conveyances . . . is unreasonable, or more obnoxious to the fourteenth amendment than the acts of congress requiring separate schools for colored children in the District of Columbia, the constitutionality of which does not seem to have been questioned, or the corresponding acts of state legislatures.