Mock Trial

 Plessy v. Ferguson

    Ladies and Gentlemen of the courtroom, the definition of the word “segregation” is “the action or state of setting someone or something apart from others.” Segregation has been a part of our world far longer than just the end of the Civil War, therefore it is a long worn out law that should be discontinued if we have any hope of moving forward to a better future. 

    Genesis 1:4 says, “God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.” In Genesis 1:14, it says “And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years.” Neither of these verses mentions anything about separating one skin color from another. Not even with Adam and Eve did God tell us to separate one race from another, that was the cause of our own sinful nature. 

    If we were to look past flesh, biologically there are no differences between each race. The only thing that differs us from one another is the amount of melanin in our skin and the fact that we as people cannot stand something or someone who looks different. As humans, we are quite literally judging a book by its cover. Why do we have any right to judge someone based on something they didn’t choose? They did not choose to be discriminated against in this way, they did not choose to be looked at as different. I can guarantee that everyone in this courtroom today has something that makes them different from another whether it be physical or mental. How would any of us like it if we were called out and judged based on one small thing that is different from the rest? We are each made uniquely by God, so why can we not look past all of our differences to see to our hearts and to listen to our words. 

    Homer Plessy was wrongfully convicted of the crime you all say he committed. How can someone who is only 1/8th African American be arrested for sitting somewhere simply because only 1/8th of him was different from those sitting around him. Let’s turn the tables for a moment, if an African American who was only 1/8th Caucasian sat on a Black only bus no one would bat an eye. This is hypocrisy at its highest. 

    I would like to challenge you all today to look deeper than flesh to find the person lying beneath the thing we judge them for. Finally, I leave you with this verse from Galatians 5:13, “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.”