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Plessy v. Ferguson
By: History.com Editors
Updated: January 11, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009
Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. The case stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for Black people. Rejecting Plessy’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated, the Supreme Court ruled that a law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between white people and Black people was not unconstitutional. As a result, restrictive Jim Crow legislation and separate public accommodations based on race became commonplace.
Plessy v. Ferguson: Background and Context
After the Compromise of 1877 led to the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, Democrats consolidated control of state legislatures throughout the region, effectively marking the end of Reconstruction .
Southern Black people saw the promise of equality under the law embodied by the 13th Amendment , 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment to the Constitution receding quickly, and a return to disenfranchisement and other disadvantages as white supremacy reasserted itself across the South.
As historian C. Vann Woodward pointed out in a 1964 article about Plessy v. Ferguson , white and Black Southerners mixed relatively freely until the 1880s, when state legislatures passed the first laws requiring railroads to provide separate cars for “Negro” or “colored” passengers.
Florida became the first state to mandate segregated railroad cars in 1887, followed in quick succession by Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana and other states by the end of the century.
Black Resistance to Segregation
As Southern Black people witnessed with horror the dawn of the Jim Crow era, members of the Black community in New Orleans decided to mount a resistance.
At the heart of the case that became Plessy v. Ferguson was a law passed in Louisiana in 1890 “providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races.” It stipulated that all passenger railways had to provide these separate cars, which should be equal in facilities.
Homer Adolph Plessy, who agreed to be the plaintiff in the case aimed at testing the law’s constitutionality, was of mixed race; he described himself as “seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African blood.”
On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a ticket on a train from New Orleans bound for Covington, Louisiana, and took a vacant seat in a whites-only car. After refusing to leave the car at the conductor’s insistence, he was arrested and jailed.
Convicted by a New Orleans court of violating the 1890 law, Plessy filed a petition against the presiding judge, Hon. John H. Ferguson, claiming that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Supreme Court Ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson
Over the next few years, segregation and Black disenfranchisement picked up pace in the South, and was more than tolerated by the North. Congress defeated a bill that would have given federal protection to elections in 1892, and nullified a number of Reconstruction laws on the books.
Then, on May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Plessy v. Ferguson . In declaring separate-but-equal facilities constitutional on intrastate railroads, the Court ruled that the protections of 14th Amendment applied only to political and civil rights (like voting and jury service), not “social rights” (sitting in the railroad car of your choice).
In its ruling, the Court denied that segregated railroad cars for Black people were necessarily inferior. “We consider the underlying fallacy of [Plessy’s] argument,” Justice Henry Brown wrote, “to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.”
John Marshall Harlan’s Dissent
Alone in the minority was Justice John Marshall Harlan , a former slaveholder from K entucky. Harlan had opposed emancipation and civil rights for freed slaves during the Reconstruction era—but changed his position due to his outrage over the actions of white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan .
Harlan argued in his dissent that segregation ran counter to the constitutional principle of equality under the law: “The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race while they are on a public highway is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution,” he wrote. “It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.”
Plessy v. Ferguson Significance
The Plessy v. Ferguson verdict enshrined the doctrine of “separate but equal” as a constitutional justification for segregation, ensuring the survival of the Jim Crow South for the next half-century.
Intrastate railroads were among many segregated public facilities the verdict sanctioned; others included buses, hotels, theaters, swimming pools and schools. By the time of the 1899 case Cummings v. Board of Education , even Harlan appeared to agree that segregated public schools did not violate the Constitution.
It would not be until the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, at the dawn of the civil rights movement , that the majority of the Supreme Court would essentially concur with Harlan’s opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson ..
Writing the majority opinion in that 1954 case, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that “the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place” in public education, calling segregated schools “inherently unequal,” and declaring that the plaintiffs in the Brown case were being “deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”
C. Vann Woodward, “ Plessy v. Ferguson : The Birth of Jim Crow,” American Heritage (Volume 15, Issue 3: April 1964). Landmark Cases: Plessy v. Ferguson, PBS: The Supreme Court – The First Hundred Years . Louis Menand, “Brown v. Board of Education and the Limits of Law,” The New Yorker (February 12, 2001). Today in History – May 18: Plessy v. Ferguson , Library of Congress .
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Plessy v. Ferguson
Written by: Julie Silverbrook, iCivics
By the end of this section, you will:.
- Explain how various factors contributed to continuity and change in the “New South” from 1877 to 1898
Use this Narrative with the Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching Narrative and the Ida B. Wells, “Lynch Law,” 1893 Primary Source to have students discuss the issues that African Americans faced after Reconstruction and through the beginning of the twentieth century.
It was not until after the U.S. Supreme Court’s now infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, upholding an 1890 railroad segregation statute in Louisiana and finding that separate accommodations for the races nevertheless could be equal, that segregation laws spread throughout the United States. After the decision, state legislatures enacted segregation statutes that extended to schools, churches, housing, jobs, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, orphanages, prisons, virtually all forms of public transportation, and sports and recreation. It is commonly believed that racial segregation had been the status quo in the South since the time of slavery, but as W. E. B. Du Bois pointed out, a rigid segregation code could not exist under slavery because the races were in close proximity much of the time. Instead, it was a horrific invention of the later nineteenth century.
Louisiana, and especially New Orleans with its Spanish and French background and sizable population of free blacks of wealth and stature, had permitted the most free intermingling between the races of any state in the South. It is not surprising, therefore, that when a bill requiring segregation on railroad cars was introduced into the Louisiana state legislature in 1890, there was vigorous opposition to it. However, the bill was passed.
The black community members who had protested the legislation went on to form the Citizens Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law and collected money to bring a test case. Albion W. Tourgée, an upstate New York lawyer who was one of the founders of the biracial Citizens Equal Rights League, supported this citizens’ group. Tourgée offered to direct the case without fee and was named lead counsel. James C. Walker, a white criminal lawyer in New Orleans, was brought on as local counsel in the case.
In seeking a test case for the law, Tourgée insisted on a plaintiff who was “nearly white.” Homer Plessy, the chosen plaintiff, was “seven-eighths” white and presented as a white man, though in Louisiana, he was considered legally black. On June 7, 1892, Plessy boarded a passenger train with a first-class ticket to a destination within Louisiana. He sat in a railroad car reserved for whites and refused to move to the car reserved for “Negroes” when asked to do so. Plessy was arrested and imprisoned in county jail. He was tried in the criminal district court of New Orleans in November 1892 and convicted, over the objections of his attorney, who argued that the Louisiana statute violated the federal Constitution. Plessy’s lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, arguing that the statute violated both the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Louisiana Supreme Court denied both claims, and Plessy’s team then appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.
The opposing sides presented oral argument starting April 13, 1896. The Supreme Court’s decision came on May 18, 1896, nearly four years after Plessy’s arrest. Justice Henry Billings Brown, writing for the Court, upheld the validity of the Louisiana statute, with only Justice John Marshall Harlan dissenting.
The issue facing the Court in Plessy was whether a Louisiana statute providing for equal but separate railway accommodations for white and black passengers violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court treated each constitutional question separately.
The majority opinion dismissed Plessy’s claim that the Louisiana statute violated the Thirteenth Amendment, holding that the statute did not impose a badge of slavery on the plaintiff. The Court found that a “statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races . . . has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races, or reestablish a state of involuntary servitude.”
On the Fourteenth Amendment question, the majority conceded that the object of the Amendment was to enforce “political” equality of the races “before the law.” But the Court then advanced two sweeping propositions. First, it said that the Fourteenth Amendment “could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.” Second, the Court argued that laws requiring segregation of the two races did not necessarily imply inferiority of either.
Expanding on the latter point, Justice Brown found “the underlying fallacy” of the plaintiff’s argument consisted “in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.”
The Court also found that although the Fourteenth Amendment granted civil and political equality, it did not secure “social equality.” The Court held that the Louisiana law was a reasonable regulation and that it was within the discretion of the state legislature to “preserv[e] . . . the public peace and good order.” He went on,
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.
The Court then turned the question of due process. This was the reason Tourgée had selected a “nearly white” plaintiff for his test case. His brief argued that the reputation of being white was a property of great pecuniary value, “the master-key that unlocks the golden door of opportunity.” From this premise, Tourgée argued that the Louisiana statute authorizing the railroad officials “to assign a person to a car set aside for a particular race” deprived the passenger of his property without due process of law. The Court responded to this argument by finding that “we are unable to see how this statute deprives [Plessy] of, or in any way affects his right to, such property. If he be a white man and assigned to a colored coach, he may have his action for damages against the company for being deprived of his so-called property. Upon the other hand, if he be a colored man and be so assigned, he has been deprived of no property, since he is not lawfully entitled to the reputation of being a white man.”
In his dissent Justice Harlan pointed out the results of the Court’s decision:
What can more certainly arouse race hate, what can more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which in fact proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens?
Harlan believed the Louisiana statute was “inconsistent not only with that equality of rights which pertains to citizenship, National and States, but with the personal liberty enjoyed by everyone within the United States.”
Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan was the lone dissenter in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case.
Harlan also reiterated his belief that the Thirteenth Amendment “not only struck down the institution of slavery as previously existed in the United States, but it prevents the imposition of any burdens or disabilities that constitute badges of slavery or servitude. It decreed universal civil freedom in this country.” He went on to famously write:
The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.
In response to the majority’s dismissal of the Fourteenth Amendment argument, Harlan argued the statute was clearly aimed at discriminating only against blacks. For Harlan, the black citizens in New Orleans who protested the Louisiana statute had no doubt about its intents and consequences. This was why the legislation was so fiercely protested in the first place. Harlan wrote:
The destinies of the two races in this country are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law. . . .State enactments regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race, and cunningly devised to defeat legitimate results of the war under the pretense of recognizing equality of rights, can have no other result than to render permanent peace impossible and to keep alive a conflict of races the continuance of which must do harm to all concerned.
The racial aggressions Justice Harlan foresaw followed the Court’s decision in 1896. Segregation laws separated the races in trains, theaters, restrooms, water fountains, and most public spaces. The enactment of laws and ordinances requiring racial segregation continued through the 1920s and 1930s and remained in effect until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s – specifically, until the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which held that segregated schools were inherently unequal and violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. The 1964 Civil Rights Act banned separate but equal public facilities.
1. African American activist W. E. B. Du Bois observed that, before the ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson ,
- under Louisiana law, blacks and whites were always legally separate
- access to public transportation in Louisiana had always been equal under the law
- legal segregation in Louisiana did not exist until the 1890 law
- he should be used in a test case
2. Homer Plessy was selected as a test case for challenging the Louisiana segregation law because he was
- a lawyer and knew the law was unconstitutional
- seven-eighths white but under Louisiana law legally black
- the founder of the Citizens Equal Rights League
- a journalist
3. According to the majority opinion in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision,
- the Fourteenth Amendment could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based on color
- the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly granted political and social equality
- states were given the right to interpret the Amendment
- no citizen has universal civil freedom
4. According to the dissenting opinion in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision,
- the main point of the Fourteenth Amendment was to enforce “political” equality of the races “before the law”
- the Court was unable to see how the Louisiana statute deprived Plessy of, or in any way affected his right to, his property
- the Constitution does not require the government to guarantee equality of results
- the Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens
5. In the majority opinion, the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment included all the following except the idea that
- the Constitution does not have jurisdiction over private transportation
- the Louisiana law was a reasonable regulation to preserve “the public peace and good order”
- the Constitution does not secure “social equality”
- the enforced separation of the two races does not stamp either with a badge of inferiority
6. “The destinies of the two races in this country are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law” is a quote from
- the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution
- the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution
- Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson
- Justice Henry Billings Brown’s majority decision in Plessy v. Ferguson
Free Response Questions
- Compare the argument made in the majority opinion of the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision with that established in the dissenting opinion.
AP Practice Questions
“The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds. If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established for the benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race. We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with the state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of – equal’ accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done.”
Justice John Marshall Harlan, dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson 163 U.S. 537, (1896)
1. The overarching concept of Justice Harlan’s dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson can best be stated as
- the Constitution is color-blind
- states’ rights are superior to the power of the federal government
- the Constitution provides for women’s suffrage
- equal access to education is paramount
2. During the time as the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, some members of the African American community were engaged in
- opening vocational schools like Tuskegee Institute
- documenting lynching incidents across the country
- organizing civil rights marches
- boycotting places of business that practiced discrimination based on race
3. Which of these statements is an accurate paraphrase of the excerpt?
- The separation of citizens on the basis of race in public places is consistent with the Constitution as long as the separate facilities are equal.
- Failure to properly regulate the enjoyment of civil rights in a state would be evil.
- Boasting of freedom does not make sense as long as the law itself degrades our fellow citizens.
- Providing for equal accommodations in the future will be sufficient to correct any inequality today.
Brown v. Board of Education , 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Legal Information Institute, Cornell University. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483
The House Joint Resolution proposing the 13th amendment to the Constitution, January 31, 1865, 38th Cong. https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=40
The House Joint Resolution proposing the 14th amendment to the Constitution, June 16, 1866, 39th Cong. https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=43
The House Joint Resolution proposing the 15th amendment to the Constitution, December 7, 1868, 40th Cong. https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=44
Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Legal Information Institute, Cornell University. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/163/537
Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1872). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/83/36/
Thomas, Brook. Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents . Boston: Bedford Books, 1996.
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 . New York: Harper, 2014.
Hoffer, Williamjames Hull. Plessy v. Ferguson: Race and Inequality in Jim Crow America . Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2012.
Horton, J.O., and M. G. Moresi. “Roberts, Plessy, and Brown: The Long, Hard Struggle Against Segregation.” OAH Magazine of History 15, no. 2 (2001).
Oberst, Paul. ” The Strange Career of Plessy v. Ferguson .” Arizona Law Review . 15 (1973):389.
“Plessy v. Ferguson.” Street Law . http://landmarkcases.org/cases/plessy-v-ferguson
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Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Citation: Plessy vs. Ferguson, Judgement, Decided May 18, 1896; Records of the Supreme Court of the United States; Record Group 267; Plessy v. Ferguson, 163, #15248, National Archives.
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The ruling in this Supreme Court case upheld a Louisiana state law that allowed for "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races."
During the era of Reconstruction, Black Americans’ political rights were affirmed by three constitutional amendments and numerous laws passed by Congress. Racial discrimination was attacked on a particularly broad front by the Civil Rights Act of 1875. This legislation made it a crime for an individual to deny “the full and equal enjoyment of any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color.”
In 1883, the Supreme Court struck down the 1875 act, ruling that the 14th Amendment did not give Congress authority to prevent discrimination by private individuals. Victims of racial discrimination were told to seek relief not from the federal government, but from the states. At the same time, state governments were passing legislation that codified inequality between the races. Laws requiring the establishment of separate schools for children of each race were most common; however, segregation was soon extended to most public and semi-public facilities through “Jim Crow” laws.
Beginning with passage of an 1887 Florida law, states began to require that railroads furnish separate accommodations for each race. These measures were unpopular with the railway companies that bore the expense of adding Jim Crow cars. Segregation of the railroads was even more objectionable to Black citizens, who saw it as a further step toward the total repudiation of three constitutional amendments. When such a bill was proposed before the Louisiana legislature in 1890, the Black community of New Orleans protested vigorously. Nonetheless, despite the presence of 16 Black legislators in the state assembly, the law was passed. It required either separate passenger coaches or partitioned coaches to provide segregated accommodations for each race. Passengers were required to sit in the appropriate areas or face a $25 fine or a 20-day jail sentence. Black nurses attending white children were permitted to ride in white compartments, however.
In 1891, a group of concerned young Black men of New Orleans formed the “Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law.” They raised money and engaged Albion W. Tourgée, a prominent Radical Republican author and politician, as their lawyer. On May 15, 1892, the Louisiana State Supreme Court decided in favor of the Pullman Company’s claim that the law was unconstitutional as it applied to interstate travel. Encouraged, the committee decided to press a test case on intrastate travel. With the cooperation of the East Louisiana Railroad, on June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, a mulatto (7/8 white), seated himself in a white compartment, was challenged by the conductor, and was arrested and charged with violating the state law. In the Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans, Tourgée argued that the law requiring “separate but equal accommodations” was unconstitutional. When Judge John H. Ferguson ruled against him, Plessy applied to the State Supreme Court for a writ of prohibition and certiorari. Although the court upheld the state law, it granted Plessy’s petition for a writ of error that would enable him to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
In 1896, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson . Justice Henry Brown of Michigan delivered the majority opinion, which sustained the constitutionality of Louisiana’s Jim Crow law. In part, he said:
We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it… The argument also assumes that social prejudice may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured except by an enforced commingling of the two races… If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.
In the lone dissent, Kentuckian Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote:
I am of the opinion that the statute of Louisiana is inconsistent with the personal liberties of citizens, white and black, in that State, and hostile to both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution of the United States. If laws of like character should be enacted in the several States of the Union, the effect would be in the highest degree mischievous. Slavery as an institution tolerated by law would, it is true, have disappeared from our country, but there would remain a power in the States, by sinister legislation, to interfere with the blessings of freedom; to regulate civil rights common to all citizens, upon the basis of race; and to place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American citizens, now constituting a part of the political community, called the people of the United States, for whom and by whom, through representatives, our government is administrated. Such a system is inconsistent with the guarantee given by the Constitution to each State of a republican form of government, and may be stricken down by congressional action, or by the courts in the discharge of their solemn duty to maintain the supreme law of the land, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
It was not until the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education and congressional civil rights acts of the 1950s and 1960s that systematic segregation under state law was ended. In the wake of those Federal actions, many states amended or rewrote their state constitutions to conform with the spirit of the 14th Amendment. For Homer Plessy, the remedies came too late.
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(Transcription of the Judgement of the Supreme Court of the United States in Plessy v. Ferguson .)
Supreme Court of the United States, No. 210, October Term, 1895.
Homer Adolph Plessy, Plaintiff in Error, vs. J.H. Ferguson, Judge of Section "A" Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans
In Error to the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana
This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record from the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana, and was argued by counsel.
On consideration whereof, It is now here ordered and adjudged by this Court that the judgement of the said Supreme Court, in this cause, be and the the same is hereby, affirmed with costs.
per Mr. Justice Brown, May 18, 1896.
Dissenting: Mr. Justice Harlan
(Transcription of Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in Plessy v. Ferguson .)
U.S. Supreme Court PLESSY v. FERGUSON, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)
163 U.S. 537 PLESSY v. FERGUSON. No. 210.
May 18, 1896. This was a petition for writs of prohibition and certiorari originally filed in the supreme court of the state by Plessy, the plaintiff in error, against the Hon. John H. Ferguson, judge of the criminal district court for the parish of Orleans, and setting forth, in substance, the following facts:
That petitioner was a citizen of the United States and a resident of the state of Louisiana, 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, and that he was entitled to every recognition, right, privilege, and immunity secured to the citizens of the United States of the white race by its constitution and laws; that on June 7, 1892, he engaged and paid for a first-class passage on the East Louisiana Railway, from New Orleans to Covington, in the same state, and thereupon entered a passenger train, and took possession of a vacant seat in a coach where passengers of the white race were accommodated; that such railroad company was incorporated by the laws of Louisiana as a common carrier, and was not authorized to distinguish between citizens according to their race, but, notwithstanding this, petitioner was required by the conductor, under penalty of ejection from said train and imprisonment, to vacate said coach, and occupy another seat, in a coach assigned by said company for persons not of the white race, and for no other reason than that petitioner was of the colored race; that, upon petitioner's refusal to comply with such order, he was, with the aid of a police officer, forcibly ejected from said coach, and hurried off to, and imprisoned in, the parish jail of New Orleans, and there held to answer a charge made by such officer to the effect that he was guilty of having criminally violated an act of the general assembly of the state, approved July 10, 1890, in such case made and provided.
The petitioner was subsequently brought before the recorder of the city for preliminary examination, and committed for trial to the criminal district court for the parish of Orleans, where an information was filed against him in the matter above set forth, for a violation of the above act, which act the petitioner affirmed to be null and void, because in conflict with the constitution of the United States; that petitioner interposed a plea to such information, based upon the unconstitutionality of the act of the general assembly, to which the district attorney, on behalf of the state, filed a demurrer; that, upon issue being joined upon such demurrer and plea, the court sustained the demurrer, overruled the plea, and ordered petitioner to plead over to the facts set forth in the information, and that, unless the judge of the said court be enjoined by a writ of prohibition from further proceeding in such case, the court will proceed to fine and sentence petitioner to imprisonment, and thus deprive him of his constitutional rights set forth in his said plea, notwithstanding the unconstitutionality of the act under which he was being prosecuted; that no appeal lay from such sentence, and petitioner was without relief or remedy except by writs of prohibition and certiorari. Copies of the information and other proceedings in the criminal district court were annexed to the petition as an exhibit.
Upon the filing of this petition, an order was issued upon the respondent to show cause why a writ of prohibition should not issue, and be made perpetual, and a further order that the record of the proceedings had in the criminal cause be certified and transmitted to the supreme court.
To this order the respondent made answer, transmitting a certified copy of the proceedings, asserting the constitutionality of the law, and averring that, instead of pleading or admitting that he belonged to the colored race, the said Plessy declined and refused, either by pleading or otherwise, to admit that he was in any sense or in any proportion a colored man.
The case coming on for hearing before the supreme court, that court was of opinion that the law under which the prosecution was had was constitutional and denied the relief prayed for by the petitioner (Ex parte Plessy, 45 La. Ann. 80, 11 South. 948); whereupon petitioner prayed for a writ of error from this court, which was allowed by the chief justice of the supreme court of Louisiana.
Mr. Justice Harlan dissenting.
A. W. Tourgee and S. F. Phillips, for plaintiff in error.
Alex. Porter Morse, for defendant in error.
Mr. Justice BROWN, after stating the facts in the foregoing language, delivered the opinion of the court.
This case turns upon the constitutionality of an act of the general assembly of the state of Louisiana, passed in 1890, providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races. Acts 1890, No. 111, p. 152.
The first section of the statute enacts 'that all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this state, shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations: provided, that this section shall not be construed to apply to street railroads. No person or persons shall be permitted to occupy seats in coaches, other than the ones assigned to them, on account of the race they belong to.'
By the second section it was enacted 'that the officers of such passenger trains shall have power and are hereby required to assign each passenger to the coach or compartment used for the race to which such passenger belongs; any passenger insisting on going into a coach or compartment to which by race he does not belong, shall be liable to a fine of twenty-five dollars, or in lieu thereof to imprisonment for a period of not more than twenty days in the parish prison, and any officer of any railroad insisting on assigning a passenger to a coach or compartment other than the one set aside for the race to which said passenger belongs, shall be liable to a fine of twenty-five dollars, or in lieu thereof to imprisonment for a period of not more than twenty days in the parish prison; and should any passenger refuse to occupy the coach or compartment to which he or she is assigned by the officer of such railway, said officer shall have power to refuse to carry such passenger on his train, and for such refusal neither he nor the railway company which he represents shall be liable for damages in any of the courts of this state.'
The third section provides penalties for the refusal or neglect of the officers, directors, conductors, and employees of railway companies to comply with the act, with a proviso that 'nothing in this act shall be construed as applying to nurses attending children of the other race.' The fourth section is immaterial.
The information filed in the criminal district court charged, in substance, that Plessy, being a passenger between two stations within the state of Louisiana, was assigned by officers of the company to the coach used for the race to which he belonged, but he insisted upon going into a coach used by the race to which he did not belong. Neither in the information nor plea was his particular race or color averred.
The petition for the writ of prohibition averred that petitioner was seven-eights Caucasian and one-eighth African blood; that the mixture of colored blood was not discernible in him; and that he was entitled to every right, privilege, and immunity secured to citizens of the United States of the white race; and that, upon such theory, he took possession of a vacant seat in a coach where passengers of the white race were accommodated, and was ordered by the conductor to vacate said coach, and take a seat in another, assigned to persons of the colored race, and, having refused to comply with such demand, he was forcibly ejected, with the aid of a police officer, and imprisoned in the parish jail to answer a charge of having violated the above act.
The constitutionality of this act is attacked upon the ground that it conflicts both with the thirteenth amendment of the constitution, abolishing slavery, and the fourteenth amendment, which prohibits certain restrictive legislation on the part of the states.
1. That it does not conflict with the thirteenth amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except a punishment for crime, is too clear for argument. Slavery implies involuntary servitude,-a state of bondage; the ownership of mankind as a chattel, or, at least, the control of the labor and services of one man for the benefit of another, and the absence of a legal right to the disposal of his own person, property, and services. This amendment was said in the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, to have been intended primarily to abolish slavery, as it had been previously known in this country, and that it equally forbade Mexican peonage or the Chinese coolie trade, when they amounted to slavery or involuntary servitude, and that the use of the word 'servitude' was intended to prohibit the use of all forms of involuntary slavery, of whatever class or name. It was intimated, however, in that case, that this amendment was regarded by the statesmen of that day as insufficient to protect the colored race from certain laws which had been enacted in the Southern states, imposing upon the colored race onerous disabilities and burdens, and curtailing their rights in the pursuit of life, liberty, and property to such an extent that their freedom was of little value; and that the fourteenth amendment was devised to meet this exigency.
So, too, in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 Sup. Ct. 18, it was said that the act of a mere individual, the owner of an inn, a public conveyance or place of amusement, refusing accommodations to colored people, cannot be justly regarded as imposing any badge of slavery or servitude upon the applicant, but only as involving an ordinary civil injury, properly cognizable by the laws of the state, and presumably subject to redress by those laws until the contrary appears. 'It would be running the slavery question into the ground,' said Mr. Justice Bradley, 'to make it apply to every act of discrimination which a person may see fit to make as to the guests he will entertain, or as to the people he will take into his coach or cab or car, or admit to his concert or theater, or deal with in other matters of intercourse or business.'
A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races-a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color-has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races, or re-establish a state of involuntary servitude. Indeed, we do not understand that the thirteenth amendment is strenuously relied upon by the plaintiff in error in this connection.
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.
The proper construction of this amendment was first called to the attention of this court in the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, which involved, however, not a question of race, but one of exclusive privileges. The case did not call for any expression of opinion as to the exact rights it was intended to secure to the colored race, but it was said generally that its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro, to give definitions of citizenship of the United States and of the states, and to protect from the hostile legislation of the states the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as distinguished from those of citizens of the states. The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but, in the nature of things, it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguish d from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation, in places where they are liable to be brought into contact, do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which have been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of states where the political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced.
One of the earliest of these cases is that of Roberts v. City of Boston, 5 Cush. 198, in which the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts held that the general school committee of Boston had power to make provision for the instruction of colored children in separate schools established exclusively for them, and to prohibit their attendance upon the other schools. 'The great principle,' said Chief Justice Shaw, 'advanced by the learned and eloquent advocate for the plaintiff [Mr. Charles Sumner], is that, by the constitution and laws of Massachusetts, all persons, without distinction of age or sex, birth or color, origin or condition, are equal before the law. ... But, when this great principle comes to be applied to the actual and various conditions of persons in society, it will not warrant the assertion that men and women are legally clothed with the same civil and political powers, and that children and adults are legally to have the same functions and be subject to the same treatment; but only that the rights of all, as they are settled and regulated by law, are equally entitled to the paternal consideration and protection of the law for their maintenance and security.' It was held that the powers of the committee extended to the establish- ment of separate schools for children of different ages, sexes and colors, and that they might also establish special schools for poor and neglected children, who have become too old to attend the primary school, and yet have not acquired the rudiments of learning, to enable them to enter the ordinary schools. Similar laws have been enacted by congress under its general power of legislation over the District of Columbia (sections 281- 283, 310, 319, Rev. St. D. C.), as well as by the legislatures of many of the states, and have been generally, if not uniformly, sustained by the courts. State v. McCann, 21 Ohio St. 210; Lehew v. Brummell (Mo. Sup.) 15 S. W. 765; Ward v. Flood, 48 Cal. 36; Bertonneau v. Directors of City Schools, 3 Woods, 177, Fed. Cas. No. 1,361; People v. Gallagher, 93 N. Y. 438; Cory v. Carter, 48 Ind. 337; Dawson v. Lee, 83 Ky. 49.
Laws forbidding the intermarriage of the two races may be said in a technical sense to interfere with the freedom of contract, and yet have been universally recognized as within the police power of the state. State v. Gibson, 36 Ind. 389.
The distinction between laws interfering with the political equality of the negro and those requiring the separation of the two races in schools, theaters, and railway carriages has been frequently drawn by this court. Thus, in Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, it was held that a law of West Virginia limiting to white male persons 21 years of age, and citizens of the state, the right to sit upon juries, was a discrimination which implied a legal inferiority in civil society, which lessened the security of the right of the colored race, and was a step towards reducing them to a condition of servility. Indeed, the right of a colored man that, in the selection of jurors to pass upon his life, liberty, and property, there shall be no exclusion of his race, and no discrimination against them because of color, has been asserted in a number of cases. Virginia v. Rivers, 100 U.S. 313 ; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U.S. 370 ; ush v. Com., 107 U.S. 110 , 1 Sup. Ct. 625; Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U.S. 565 , 16 Sup. Ct. 904. So, where the laws of a particular locality or the charter of a particular railway corporation has provided that no person shall be excluded from the cars on account of color, we have held that this meant that persons of color should travel in the same car as white ones, and that the enactment was not satisfied by the company providing cars assigned exclusively to people of color, though they were as good as those which they assigned exclusively to white persons. Railroad Co. v. Brown, 17 Wall. 445.
Upon the other hand, where a statute of Louisiana required those engaged in the transportation of passengers among the states to give to all persons traveling within that state, upon vessels employed in that business, equal rights and privileges in all parts of the vessel, without distinction on account of race or color, and subjected to an action for damages the owner of such a vessel who excluded colored passengers on account of their color from the cabin set aside by him for the use of whites, it was held to be, so far as it applied to interstate commerce, unconstitutional and void. Hall v. De Cuir, 95 U.S. 485 . The court in this case, however, expressly disclaimed that it had anything whatever to do with the statute as a regulation of internal commerce, or affecting anything else than commerce among the states.
In the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 , 3 Sup. Ct. 18, it was held that an act of congress entitling all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances, on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement, and made applicable to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude, was unconstitutional and void, upon the ground that the fourteenth amendment was prohibitory upon the states only, and the legislation authorized to be adopted by congress for enforcing it was not direct legislation on matters respecting which the states were prohibited from making or enforcing certain laws, or doing certain acts, but was corrective legislation, such as might be necessary or proper for counter-acting and redressing the effect of such laws or acts. In delivering the opinion of the court, Mr. Justice Bradley observed that the fourteenth amendment 'does not invest congress with power to legislate upon subjects that are within the domain of state legislation, but to provide modes of relief against state legislation or state action of the kind referred to. It does not authorize congress to create a code of municipal law for the regulation of private rights, but to provide modes of redress against the operation of state laws, and the action of state officers, executive or judicial, when these are subversive of the fundamental rights specified in the amendment. Positive rights and privileges are undoubtedly secured by the fourteenth amendment; but they are secured by way of prohibition against state laws and state proceedings affecting those rights and privileges, and by power given to congress to legislate for the purpose of carrying such prohibition into effect; and such legislation must necessarily be predicated upon such supposed state laws or state proceedings, and be directed to the correction of their operation and effect.'
Much nearer, and, indeed, almost directly in point, is the case of the Louisville, N. O. & T. Ry. Co. v. State, 133 U.S. 587 , 10 Sup. Ct. 348, wherein the railway company was indicted for a violation of a statute of Mississippi, enacting that all railroads carrying passengers should provide equal, but separate, accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing two or more passenger cars for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger cars by a partition, so as to secure separate accommodations. The case was presented in a different aspe t from the one under consideration, inasmuch as it was an indictment against the railway company for failing to provide the separate accommodations, but the question considered was the constitutionality of the law. In that case, the supreme court of Mississippi (66 Miss. 662, 6 South. 203) had held that the statute applied solely to commerce within the state, and, that being the construction of the state statute by its highest court, was accepted as conclusive. 'If it be a matter,' said the court (page 591, 133 U. S., and page 348, 10 Sup. Ct.), 'respecting commerce wholly within a state, and not interfering with commerce between the states, then, obviously, there is no violation of the commerce clause of the federal constitution. ... No question arises under this section as to the power of the state to separate in different compartments interstate pas- sengers, or affect, in any manner, the privileges and rights of such passengers. All that we can consider is whether the state has the power to require that railroad trains within her limits shall have separate accommodations for the two races. That affecting only commerce within the state is no invasion of the power given to congress by the commerce clause.'
A like course of reasoning applies to the case under consideration, since the supreme court of Louisiana, in the case of State v. Judge, 44 La. Ann. 770, 11 South. 74, held that the statute in question did not apply to interstate passengers, but was confined in its application to passengers traveling exclusively within the borders of the state. The case was decided largely upon the authority of Louisville, N. O. & T. Ry. Co. v. State, 66 Miss. 662, 6 South, 203, and affirmed by this court in 133 U.S. 587 , 10 Sup. Ct. 348. In the present case no question of interference with interstate commerce can possibly arise, since the East Louisiana Railway appears to have been purely a local line, with both its termini within the state of Louisiana. Similar statutes for the separation of the two races upon public conveyances were held to be constitutional in Railroad v. Miles, 55 Pa. St. 209; Day v. Owen 5 Mich. 520; Railway Co. v. Williams, 55 Ill. 185; Railroad Co. v. Wells, 85 Tenn. 613; 4 S. W. 5; Railroad Co. v. Benson, 85 Tenn. 627, 4 S. W. 5; The Sue, 22 Fed. 843; Logwood v. Railroad Co., 23 Fed. 318; McGuinn v. Forbes, 37 Fed. 639; People v. King ( N. Y. App.) 18 N. E. 245; Houck v. Railway Co., 38 Fed. 226; Heard v. Railroad Co., 3 Inter St. Commerce Com. R. 111, 1 Inter St. Commerce Com. R. 428.
While we think the enforced separation of the races, as applied to the internal commerce of the state, neither abridges the privileges or immunities of the colored man, deprives him of his property without due process of law, nor denies him the equal protection of the laws, within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment, we are not prepared to say that the conductor, in assigning passengers to the coaches according to their race, does not act at his peril, or that the provision of the second section of the act that denies to the passenger compensation in damages for a refusal to receive him into the coach in which he properly belongs is a valid exercise of the legislative power. Indeed, we understand it to be conceded by the state's attorney that such part of the act as exempts from liability the railway company and its officers is unconstitutional. The power to assign to a particular coach obviously implies the power to determine to which race the passenger belongs, as well as the power to determine who, under the laws of the particular state, is to be deemed a white, and who a colored, person. This question, though indicated in the brief of the plaintiff in error, does not properly arise upon the record in this case, since the only issue made is as to the unconstitutionality of the act, so far as it requires the railway to provide separate accommodations, and the conductor to assign passengers according to their race.
It is claimed by the plaintiff in error that, in an mixed community, the reputation of belonging to the dominant race, in this instance the white race, is 'property,' in the same sense that a right of action or of inheritance is property. Conceding this to be so, for the purposes of this case, we are unable to see how this statute deprives him of, or in any way affects his right to, such property. If he be a white man, and assigned to a colored coach, he may have his action for damages against the company for being deprived of his so-called 'property.' Upon the other hand, if he be a colored man, and be so assigned, he has been deprived of no property, since he is not lawfully entitled to the reputation of being a white man.
In this connection, it is also suggested by the learned counsel for the plaintiff in error that the same argument that will justify the state legislature in requiring railways to provide separate accommodations for the two races will also authorize them to require separate cars to be provided for people whose hair is of a certain color, or who are aliens, or who belong to certain nationalities, or to enact laws requiring colored people to walk upon one side of the street, and white people upon the other, or requiring white men's houses to be painted white, and colored men's black, or their vehicles or business signs to be of different colors, upon the theory that one side of the street is as good as the other, or that a house or vehicle of one color is as good as one of another color. The reply to all this is that every exercise of the police power must be reasonable, and extend only to such laws as are enacted in good faith for the promotion of the public good, and not for the annoyance or oppression of a particular class. Thus, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 , 6 Sup. Ct. 1064, it was held by this court that a municipal ordinance of the city of San Francisco, to regulate the carrying on of public laundries within the limits of the municipality, violated the provisions of the constitution of the United States, if it conferred upon the municipal authorities arbitrary power, at their own will, and without regard to discretion, in the legal sense of the term, to give or withhold consent as to persons or places, without regard to the competency of the persons applying or the propriety of the places selected for the carrying on of the business. It was held to be a covert attempt on the part of the municipality to make an arbitrary and unjust discrimination against the Chinese race. While this was the case of a municipal ordinance, a like principle has been held to apply to acts of a state legislature passed in the exercise of the police power. Railroad Co. v. Husen, 95 U.S. 465 ; Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Kentucky, 161 U.S. 677 , 16 Sup. Ct. 714, and cases cited on page 700, 161 U. S., and page 714, 16 Sup. Ct.; Daggett v. Hudson, 43 Ohio St. 548, 3 N. E. 538; Capen v. Foster, 12 Pick. 485; State v. Baker, 38 Wis. 71; Monroe v. Collins, 17 Ohio St. 665; Hulseman v. Rems, 41 Pa. St. 396; Osman v. Riley, 15 Cal. 48.
So far, then, as a conflict with the fourteenth amendment is concerned, the case reduces itself to the question whether the statute 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.
We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. The argument necessarily assumes that if, as has been more than once the case, and is not unlikely to be so again, the colored race should become the dominant power in the state legislature, and should enact a law in precisely similar terms, it would thereby relegate the white race to an inferior position. We imagine that the white race, at least, would not acquiesce in this assumption. The argument also assumes that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other's merits, and a voluntary consent of individuals. As was said by the court of appeals of New York in People v. Gallagher, 93 N. Y. 438, 448: 'This end can neither be accomplished nor promoted by laws which conflict with the general sentiment of the community upon whom they are designed to operate. When the government, therefore, has secured to each of its citizens equal rights before the law, and equal opportunities for improvement and progress, it has accomplished the end for which it was organized, and performed all of the functions respecting social advantages with which it is endowed.' Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts, or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.
It is true that the question of the proportion of colored blood necessary to constitute a colored person, as distinguished from a white person, is one upon which there is a difference of opinion in the different states; some holding that any visible admixture of black blood stamps the person as belonging to the colored race (State v. Chavers, 5 Jones [N. C.] 1); others, that it depends upon the preponderance of blood ( Gray v. State, 4 Ohio, 354; Monroe v. Collins, 17 Ohio St. 665); and still others, that the predominance of white blood must only be in the proportion of three-fourths (People v. Dean, 14 Mich. 406; Jones v. Com., 80 Va. 544). But these are questions to be determined under the laws of each state, and are not properly put in issue in this case. Under the allegations of his petition, it may undoubtedly become a question of importance whether, under the laws of Louisiana, the petitioner belongs to the white or colored race.
The judgment of the court below is therefore affirmed.
Mr. Justice BREWER did not hear the argument or participate in the decision of this case.
Mr. Justice HARLAN dissenting.
By the Louisiana statute the validity of which is here involved, all railway companies (other than street-railroad companies) carry passengers in that state are required to have separate but equal accommodations for white and colored persons, 'by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations.' Under this statute, no colored person is permitted to occupy a seat in a coach assigned to white persons; nor any white person to occupy a seat in a coach assigned to colored persons. The managers of the railroad are not allowed to exercise any discretion in the premises, but are required to assign each passenger to some coach or compartment set apart for the exclusive use of is race. If a passenger insists upon going into a coach or compartment not set apart for persons of his race, he is subject to be fined, or to be imprisoned in the parish jail. Penalties are prescribed for the refusal or neglect of the officers, directors, conductors, and employees of railroad companies to comply with the provisions of the act.
Only 'nurses attending children of the other race' are excepted from the operation of the statute. No exception is made of colored attendants traveling with adults. A white man is not permitted to have his colored servant with him in the same coach, even if his condition of health requires the constant personal assistance of such servant. If a colored maid insists upon riding in the same coach with a white woman whom she has been employed to serve, and who may need her personal attention while traveling, she is subject to be fined or imprisoned for such an exhibition of zeal in the discharge of duty.
While there may be in Louisiana persons of different races who are not citizens of the United States, the words in the act 'white and colored races' necessarily include all citizens of the United States of both races residing in that state. So that we have before us a state enactment that compels, under penalties, the separation of the two races in railroad passenger coaches, and makes it a crime for a citizen of either race to enter a coach that has been assigned to citizens of the other race.
Thus, the state regulates the use of a public highway by citizens of the United States solely upon the basis of race.
However apparent the injustice of such legislation may be, we have only to consider whether it is consistent with the constitution of the United States.
That a railroad is a public highway, and that the corporation which owns or operates it is in the exercise of public functions, is not, at this day, to be disputed. Mr. Justice Nelson, speaking for this court in New Jersey Steam Nav. Co. v. Merchants' Bank, 6 How. 344, 382, said that a common carrier was in the exercise 'of a sort of public office, and has public duties to perform, from which he should not be permitted to exonerate himself without the assent of the parties concerned.' Mr. Justice Strong, delivering the judgment of this court in Olcott v. Supervisors, 16 Wall. 678, 694, said: 'That railroads, though constructed by private corporations, and owned by them, are public highways, has been the doctrine of nearly all the courts ever since such conveniences for passage and transportation have had any existence. Very early the question arose whether a state's right of eminent domain could be exercised by a private corporation created for the purpose of constructing a railroad. Clearly, it could not, unless taking land for such a purpose by such an agency is taking land for public use. The right of eminent domain nowhere justifies taking property for a private use. Yet it is a doctrine universally accepted that a state legislature may authorize a private corporation to take land for the construction of such a road, making compensation to the owner. What else does this doctrine mean if not that building a railroad, though it be built by a private corporation, is an act done for a public use?' So, in Township of Pine Grove v. Talcott, 19 Wall. 666, 676: 'Though the corporation [a railroad company] was private, its work was public, as much so as if it were to be constructed by the state.' So, in Inhabitants of Worcester v. Western R. Corp., 4 Metc. (Mass.) 564: 'The establishment of that great thoroughfare is regarded as a public work, established by public authority, intended for the public use and benefit, the use of which is secured to the whole community, and constitutes, therefore, like a canal, turnpike, or highway, a public easement.' 'It is true that the real and personal property, necessary to the establishment and management of the railroad, is vested in the corporation; but it is in trust for the public.'
In respect of civil rights, common to all citizens, the constitution of the United States does not, I think, permit any public authority to know the race of those entitled to be protected in the enjoyment of such rights. Every true man has pride of race, and under appropriate circumstances, when the rights of others, his equals before the law, are not to be affected, it is his privilege to express such pride and to take such action based upon it as to him seems proper. But I deny that any legislative body or judicial tribunal may have regard to the race of citizens when the civil rights of those citizens are involved. Indeed, such legislation as that here in question is inconsistent not only with that equality of rights which pertains to citizenship, national and state, but with the personal liberty enjoyed by every one within the United States.
The thirteenth amendment does not permit the withholding or the deprivation of any right necessarily inhering in freedom. It not only struck down the institution of slavery as previously existing in the United States, but it prevents the imposition of any burdens or disabilities that constitute badges of slavery or servitude. It decreed universal civil freedom in this country. This court has so adjudged. But, that amendment having been found inadequate to the protection of the rights of those who had been in slavery, it was followed by the fourteenth amendment, which added greatly to the dignity and glory of American citizenship, and to the security of personal liberty, by declaring that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside,' and that 'no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' These two amendments, if enforced according to their true intent and meaning, will protect all the civil rights that pertain to freedom and citizenship. Finally, and to the end that no citizen should be denied, on account of his race, the privilege of participating in the political control of his country, it was declared by the fifteenth amendment that 'the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.'
These notable additions to the fundamental law were welcomed by the friends of liberty throughout the world. They removed the race line from our governmental systems. They had, as this court has said, a common purpose, namely, to secure 'to a race recently emancipated, a race that through many generations have been held in slavery, all the civil rights that the superior race enjoy.' They declared, in legal effect, this court has further said, 'that the law in the states shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the states; and in regard to the colored race, for whose protection the amendment was primarily designed, that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color.' We also said: 'The words of the amendment, it is true, are prohibitory, but they contain a necessary implication of a positive immunity or right, most valuable to the colored race,-the right to exemption from unfriendly legislation against them distinctively as colored; exemption from legal discriminations, implying inferiority in civil society, lessening the security of their enjoyment of the rights which others enjoy; and discriminations which are steps towards reducing them to the condition of a subject race.' It was, consequently, adjudged that a state law that excluded citizens of the colored race from juries, because of their race, however well qualified in other respects to discharge the duties of jurymen, was repugnant to the fourteenth amendment. Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 306 , 307 S.; Virginia v. Rives, Id. 313; Ex parte Virginia, Id. 339; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U.S. 370 , 386; Bush v. Com., 107 U.S. 110, 116 , 1 S. Sup. Ct. 625. At the present term, referring to the previous adjudications, this court declared that 'underlying all of those decisions is the principle that the constitution of the United States, in its present form, forbids, so far as civil and political rights are concerned, discrimination by the general government or the states against any citizen because of his race. All citizens are equal before the law.' Gibson v. State, 162 U.S. 565 , 16 Sup. Ct. 904.
The decisions referred to show the scope of the recent amendments of the constitution. They also show that it is not within the power of a state to prohibit colored citizens, because of their race, from participating as jurors in the administration of justice.
It was said in argument that the statute of Louisiana does not discriminate against either race, but prescribes a rule applicable alike to white and colored citizens. But this argument does not meet the difficulty. Every one knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons. Railroad corporations of Louisiana did not make discrimination among whites in the matter of accommodation for travelers. The thing to accomplish was, under the guise of giving equal accommodation for whites and blacks, to compel the latter to keep to themselves while traveling in railroad passenger coaches. No one would be so wanting in candor as to assert the contrary. The fundamental objection, therefore, to the statute, is that it interferes with the personal freedom of citizens. 'Personal liberty,' it has been well said, 'consists in the power of locomotion, of changing situation, or removing one's person to whatsoever places one's own inclination may direct, without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law.' 1 Bl. Comm. *134. If a white man and a black man choose to occupy the same public conveyance on a public highway, it is their right to do so; and no government, proceeding alone on grounds of race, can prevent it without infringing the personal liberty of each.
It is one thing for railroad carriers to furnish, or to be required by law to furnish, equal accommodations for all whom they are under a legal duty to carry. It is quite another thing for government to forbid citizens of the white and black races from traveling in the same public conveyance, and to punish officers of railroad companies for permitting persons of the two races to occupy the same passenger coach. If a state can prescribe, as a rule of civil conduct, that whites and blacks shall not travel as passengers in the same railroad coach, why may it not so regulate the use of the streets of its cities and towns as to compel white citizens to keep on one side of a street, and black citizens to keep on the other? Why may it not, upon like grounds, punish whites and blacks who ride together in street cars or in open vehicles on a public road or street? Why may it not require sheriffs to assign whites to one side of a court room, and blacks to the other? And why may it not also prohibit the commingling of the two races in the galleries of legislative halls or in public assemblages convened for the consideration of the political questions of the day? Further, if this statute of Louisiana is consistent with the personal liberty of citizens, why may not the state require the separation in railroad coaches of native and naturalized citizens of the United States, or of Protestants and Roman Catholics?
The answer given at the argument to these questions was that regulations of the kind they suggest would be unreasonable, and could not, therefore, stand before the la . Is it meant that the determination of questions of legislative power depends upon the inquiry whether the statute whose validity is questioned is, in the judgment of the courts, a reasonable one, taking all the circumstances into consideration? A statute may be unreasonable merely because a sound public policy forbade its enactment. But I do not understand that the courts have anything to do with the policy or expediency of legislation. A statute may be valid, and yet, upon grounds of public policy, may well be characterized as unreasonable. Mr. Sedgwick correctly states the rule when he says that, the legislative intention being clearly ascertained, 'the courts have no other duty to perform than to execute the legislative will, without any regard to their views as to the wisdom or justice of the particular enactment.' Sedg. St. & Const. Law, 324. There is a dangerous tendency in these latter days to enlarge the functions of the courts, by means of judicial interference with the will of the people as expressed by the legislature. Our institutions have the distinguishing characteristic that the three departments of government are co-ordinate and separate. Each much keep within the limits defined by the constitution. And the courts best discharge their duty by executing the will of the law-making power, constitutionally expressed, leaving the results of legislation to be dealt with by the people through their representatives. Statutes must always have a reasonable construction. Sometimes they are to be construed strictly, sometimes literally, in order to carry out the legislative will. But, however construed, the intent of the legislature is to be respected if the particular statute in question is valid, although the courts, looking at the public interests, may conceive the statute to be both unreasonable and impolitic. If the power exists to enact a statute, that ends the matter so far as the courts are concerned. The adjudged cases in which statutes have been held to be void, because unreasonable, are those in which the means employed by the legislature were not at all germane to the end to which the legislature was competent.
The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guarantied by the supreme law of the land are involved. It is therefore to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a state to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race.
In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott Case.
It was adjudged in that case that the descendants of Africans who were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, were not included nor intended to be included under the word 'citizens' in the constitution, and could not claim any of the rights and privileges which that instrument provided for and secured to citizens of the United States; that, at time of the adoption of the constitution, they were 'considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them.' 17 How. 393, 404. The recent amendments of the constitution, it was supposed, had eradicated these principles from our institutions. But it seems that we have yet, in some of the states, a dominant race,-a superior class of citizens,-which assumes to regulate the enjoyment of civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race. The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the constitution, by one of which the blacks of this country were made citizens of the United States and of the states in which they respectively reside, and whose privileges and immunities, as citizens, the states are forbidden to abridge. Sixty millions of whites are in no danger from the presence here of eight millions of blacks. The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law. What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens? That, as all will admit, is the real meaning of such legislation as was enacted in Louisiana.
The sure guaranty of the peace and security of each race is the clear, distinct, unconditional recognition by our governments, national and state, of every right that inheres in civil freedom, and of the equality before the law of all citizens of the United States, without regard to race. State enactments regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race, and cunningly devised to defeat legitimate results of the war, under the pretense of recognizing equality of rights, can have no other result than to render permanent peace impossible, and to keep alive a conflict of races, the continuance of which must do harm to all concerned. This question is not met by the suggestion that social equality cannot exist between the white and black races in this country. That argument, if it can be properly regarded as one, is scarcely worthy of consideration; for social equality no more exists between two races when traveling in a passenger coach or a public highway than when members of the same races sit by each other in a street car or in the jury box, or stand or sit with each other in a political assembly, or when they use in common the streets of a city or town, or when they are in the same room for the purpose of having their names placed on the registry of voters, or when they approach the ballot box in order to exercise the high privilege of voting.
There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race. But, by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union, who are entitled, by law, to participate in the political control of the state and nation, who are not excluded, by law or by reason of their race, from public stations of any kind, and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race. It is scarcely just to say that a colored citizen should not object to occupying a public coach assigned to his own race. He does not object, nor, perhaps, would he object to separate coaches for his race if his rights under the law were recognized. But he does object, and he ought never to cease objecting, that citizens of the white and black races can be adjudged criminals because they sit, or claim the right to sit, in the same public coach on a public highway. The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.
If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established for the benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race. We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow citizens,-our equals before the law. The thin disguise of 'equal' accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead any one, nor atone for the wrong this day done.
The result of the whole matter is that while this court has frequently adjudged, and at the present term has recognized the doctrine, that a state cannot, consistently with the constitution of the United States, prevent white and black citizens, having the required qualifications for jury service, from sitting in the same jury box, it is now solemnly held that a state may prohibit white and black citizens from sitting in the same passenger coach on a public highway, or may require that they be separated by a 'partition' when in the same passenger coach. May it not now be reasonably expected that astute men of the dominant race, who affect to be disturbed at the possibility that the integrity of the white race may be corrupted, or that its supremacy will be imperiled, by contact on public highways with black people, will endeavor to procure statutes requiring white and black jurors to be separated in the jury box by a 'partition,' and that, upon retiring from the court room to consult as to their verdict, such partition, if it be a movable one, shall be taken to their consultation room, and set up in such way as to prevent black jurors from coming too close to their brother jurors of the white race. If the 'partition' used in the court room happens to be stationary, provision could be made for screens with openings through which jurors of the two races could confer as to their verdict without coming into personal contact with each other. I cannot see but that, according to the principles this day announced, such state legislation, although conceived in hostility to, and enacted for the purpose of humiliating, citizens of the United States of a particular race, would be held to be consistent with the constitution.
I do not deem it necessary to review the decisions of state courts to which reference was made in argument. Some, and the most important, of them, are wholly inapplicable, because rendered prior to the adoption of the last amendments of the constitution, when colored people had very few rights which the dominant race felt obliged to respect. Others were made at a time when public opinion, in many localities, was dominated by the institution of slavery; when it would not have been safe to do justice to the black man; and when, so far as the rights of blacks were concerned, race prejudice was, practically, the supreme law of the land. Those decisions cannot be guides in the era introduced by the recent amendments of the supreme law, which established universal civil freedom, gave citizenship to all born or naturalized in the United States, and residing ere, obliterated the race line from our systems of governments, national and state, and placed our free institutions upon the broad and sure foundation of the equality of all men before the law.
I am of opinion that the state of Louisiana is inconsistent with the personal liberty of citizens, white and black, in that state, and hostile to both the spirit and letter of the constitution of the United States. If laws of like character should be enacted in the several states of the Union, the effect would be in the highest degree mischievous. Slavery, as an institution tolerated by law, would, it is true, have disappeared from our country; but there would remain a power in the states, by sinister legislation, to interfere with the full enjoyment of the blessings of freedom, to regulate civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race, and to place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American citizens, now constituting a part of the political community, called the 'People of the United States,' for whom, and by whom through representatives, our government is administered. Such a system is inconsistent with the guaranty given by the constitution to each state of a republican form of government, and may be stricken down by congressional action, or by the courts in the discharge of their solemn duty to maintain the supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
For the reason stated, I am constrained to withhold my assent from the opinion and judgment of the majority.
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Home / Essay Samples / Law, Crime & Punishment / Legal cases / Plessy v Ferguson
Case of Plessy Vs Ferguson
Law, Crime & Punishment
Judiciary , Legal cases
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- Brown, R. H. (2001). Race and the Supreme Court in historical context: Plessy v. Ferguson. PS: Political Science & Politics, 34(1), 35-39. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096501000074
- Finkelman, P. (2018). Plessy v. Ferguson. In P. Finkelman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States (2nd ed., pp. 61-63). Macmillan Reference USA.
- Hoffer, W. J. (2014). Plessy v. Ferguson: Prelude to Brown v. Board of Education. In The Supreme Court: An essential history (pp. 47-63). University Press of Kansas.
- Irons, P. (1987). Jim Crow's children: The broken promise of the Brown decision. Penguin Books.
- LaFantasie, G. (2006). Get on board, little children: Reflections on Plessy v. Ferguson. Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, 47(1), 5-22.
- Leuchtenburg, W. E. (1995). The Supreme Court reborn: The constitutional revolution in the age of Roosevelt. Oxford University Press.
- Lofgren, C. A. (1987). The Plessy case: A legal-historical interpretation. Oxford University Press.
- Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
- Smith, T. A. (2014). From slavery to freedom: A history of African Americans. McGraw-Hill.
- Woodward, C. V. (1955). The strange career of Jim Crow. Oxford University Press.
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Essay On Plessy V Ferguson 1896
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Kelly (n.d.) wrote that this U.S. Supreme Court case in 1896 followed on from earlier cases in the Louisiana courts in 1892, which were the consequences of Homer Plessy (a light-skinned African American) seating himself in a Louisiana train railroad car designated as “whites only”, then refusing to leave, for which he was arrested. That landmark Supreme Court case verdict had a huge impact on African Americans, as described in the following paragraphs.
The Case and its Impacts
The Majlessi Law Firm’s article (n.d.) entitled “Historic Trial – Plessy V. Ferguson” states that Plessy’s attempt to travel on an East Louisiana train in a “whites-only” car – for which he was arrested and put in jail – was on June 7, 1892. Plessy himself filed a case in the Louisiana court, in which he argued that Louisiana was not observing the Constitutional 13th and 14th Amendments. The Judge – John H. Ferguson – ruled against Plessy, on the basis that the Louisiana rail companies had to observe Louisiana rules and regulations. Plessy supporters took the case to the Louisiana Supreme Court, where Ferguson’s verdict was upheld. The same Plessy supporters pressed on and took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the outcome was the same. The Majlessi article mentions one influential voice supporting Plessy; that of Judge John Marshall Harlan, who supported racial equality and opposed those racially-slanted decisions, stating that “the Constitution is color-blind, and all citizens should be equal before the law.” Cozzens (1995) states that the Plessy decision set a precedent which was interpreted as meaning that having or providing separate facilities for black and white citizens was considered constitutionally correct, so long as those facilities were “equal”. That philosophy of “separate but equal” facilities was very soon extended to almost every area of public life, including public schools, all transportation, restaurants, theatres and even public toilets. Cozzens notes that this “separate but equal doctrine” endured until the year 1954 when the case of Brown v. Board of Education brought it to an end, beginning a new era of much increased racial equality. McBride (2006) sees that Supreme Court verdict as giving a “constitutional nod” to widespread public racial segregation. Although facilities were supposed to be “separate but equal” for blacks and whites, McBride notes that the facilities provided for blacks were far from equal and thus contributed to what his article refers to as “a kind of racial caste society.” Robinson Henry (1998) describes the effects of the case as effectively preventing African Americans from enjoying equal opportunities and access to higher education – privileges “that other Americans take for granted.” The article also comments that the Plessy verdict provided U.S. states with the means to operate their education systems in a skewed way that “blatantly discriminated against African Americans” denying them the same opportunities the whites had.
The findings of those Louisiana courts against Homer Plessy, subsequently endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court, paved the way for over 50 years of nationwide policies of racial discrimination against (mainly) African Americans. Until the ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, America existed as two separate societies, in which the nation’s black people were treated as second class citizens, effectively denied equal opportunities in education, employment, leisure pursuits, travel, and just about every aspect of everyday life.
Cozzens, Lisa. “Plessy v. Ferguson.” (1995, updated1999). After the Civil War. Web. 19 October 2012. “Historic Trial – Plessy V. Ferguson.” (n.d.). Majlessi Law Firm. Web. 20 October 2012. Kelly, Martin. “Plessy v. Ferguson.” (n.d.). About.com: Education: American History. Web. 19 October 2012. McBride, Alex. “Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).” (Dec 2006). Web. 20 October 2012. Robinson Henry, Dr. A’Lelia. (Jan 1998). “Perpetuating Inequality: Plessy v. Ferguson and the Dilemma of Black Access to Public and Higher Education.” Jefferson Law Book Company, Division of Anderson Publishing Co. Journal of Law & Education. Web. 20 October 2012.
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- Brown V. Board Of Education , Discrimination , Human Rights , Justice , Plessy v Ferguson , Social Issues , United States
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The Plessy v. Ferguson case took place on May 18, 1896. Around this time was when the racial segregation laws were placed. In the Plessy v. Ferguson case, Plessy got on a train and settled down on a coach. The conductor asked him to move to another spot but Plessy refused to. He was thrown off the train and went to jail. The Separate Car Act stated that Louisiana railways are required to have a separate-but-equal coach for black and white passengers and Plessy argued that he was 7/8 white and 1/8 black. He exclaimed he was white, but the guard said that under the Louisiana Law, he was black. He was then put on trial for breaking the law. Plessy said the Law was unconstitutional, but Ferguson thought otherwise. Plessy then asked the Louisiana Supreme Court, but they believed it was constitutional too, so he lost. Then, he took the case to the United States Supreme Court. Justice Harlan said that the decision in Plessy will foster animosity, and that it will be overturned. The decision ended up justifying racial segregation in the United States.
Brown v. Board of Education had a very positive effect on legal segregation. It helped chip away a racist social structure by finally outlawing segregation in schools. It helped to create the Civil Rights Movement. A decade after that, came the Civil Rights Act which put an end to all segregation. Then, the Voting Rights Act developed which put a stop to rationally discrimination voting restrictions. Can you imagine having a school right next to your house and not being able to attend it just because of the color of your skin? Linda Brown had to travel to a school that was far from her house due to segregation, but she put a stop to it. Although the “separate but equal” act was legal, it did not benefit the African Americans because they were still getting segregated. Since Plessy stood up for himself, other African Americans stood with him. Some of them were too afraid to fight for their rights that they just let the white people step all over them, but Plessy finally challenged them. Although he didn’t win, he started to make people realize that although it was separate but equal, it was not fair. W.E.B. DuBois heard about this and that’s what lead to the commencement of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP), an organization that struggled and fought for the equal rights of colored people. In the Brown case, education was seen as one of the most important functions of government, so they overruled the separate but equal act, because it was unjust. Several cases where kids were being discriminated in schools is what helped bring this case to the Supreme Court. It was happening so often that it needed to be recognized.
The Brown and Plessy cases helped to establish the development of the NAACP Association. The NAACP helped accomplish a lot for African Americans no matter how brutally they were beat, killed, etc. They stood up for their rights while everyone else was afraid to do so because of the fear they had of being arrested or even killed. These cases helped to put an end to slavery and that everyone was treated equally. It took some time, but they made it happen.
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Plessy v. ferguson essay.
One of the more notable events in U.S. history with regard to the status of African Americans was the 1896 Supreme Court ruling Plessy v. Ferguson. It legitimized African Americans’ subordinate status in society, and cast segregation as a fundamental law of the land and made constitutional what became known as “second-class citizenship.”
Even in colonial times, the status of Africans in “white America” was problematic. The shift from “nonracialized” indentured servitude in the early 1600s to “racialized” slavery by midcentury was a major status change for Africans, from human to chattel. Chattel refers to valuable property or investments that can be moved from place to place. These “investments” were equivalent to owning cows, horses, or other farm animals. Not even fighting in the Revolutionary War was sufficient for blacks to gain citizenship, as the nation’s first citizenship law, the Immigration and Naturalization law of 1790, restricted citizenship to whites. After 200 years as chattel in the South and noncitizens elsewhere, blacks benefited from the Union’s Civil War victory and the outlawing of slavery with passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment provided due process and “equal protection of the laws” for African Americans, and the Fifteenth Amendment struck down prior servitude as a basis for denying black males the right to vote. Known as the “Civil War Amendments,” they extended to blacks full citizenship rights that lasted for the brief Reconstruction period (1865-76).
The beginning of the end of Reconstruction, however, began with the Hayes-Tilden compromise. As a result of an electoral crisis in the 1876 election, Samuel Tilden, a New York Democrat, surrendered his electoral votes to the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for removal of troops from the South. The compromise essentially ended protection for Reconstruction governments and their black constituencies.
What followed next was “redemption,” or the restoration of white supremacy that undid black gains, including their voting rights and right to be elected to political offices. Southern states began enacting segregation laws, such as Louisiana’s 1890 law mandating separate railway cars by race. In this climate, the Plessy ruling would provide a legal framework for further segregation.
The Plessy v. Ferguson case involved Homer A. Plessy, a New Orleans mulatto, who was one-eighth black and seven-eighths white, but was classified as African American under Louisiana law. He was arrested in 1892 for refusing to leave the white passenger car on the East Louisiana Railway. Denied that first-class accommodation, Plessy challenged the Louisiana racial segregation law under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. After losing his appeal in the Louisiana Supreme Court, which upheld a lower court ruling in favor of the railroad’s segregation policy, Plessy took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Earlier, the Supreme Court ruled in the Slaughter House Cases in 1873, and the subsequent United States v. Cruikshank in 1876, that dealing with the widespread murder of blacks practicing their constitutional political rights at the hands of white mob violence “rest[ed] alone with the states,” not on any protections from the federal government. Even earlier, in the 1857 Dred Scott decision, the majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, himself a slaveholder, stipulated that “the black man has no rights which whites are bound to respect.” These postwar rulings varied little from that of Taney and essentially encouraged the tyranny of the Ku Klux Klan. As white supremacy was being restored, the random, though ever-present violence to which blacks were subjected reaffirmed that blacks had no citizenship rights. Their assailants were seldom brought to justice.
Rather than uphold the basic principle of the Fourteenth Amendment of blacks having “equal protection under the laws,” the 1896 Court held in Plessy that things could be “separate but equal.” In his majority opinion, Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote that it was not the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment to “abolish distinctions based on color” or to enforce “a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.” He added that separation of the races, a state right, does “not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other.”
Justice Brown’s reasoning was consistent with other Court rulings in this interpretation of the law. In suits to enforce the civil rights laws granting equal opportunity in public accommodations, housing, and so on, the Court reasoned that since blacks were no longer slaves, distinctions based on “race, or color, or class distinctions” had nothing to do with their denial because of prior servitude. By endorsing the railroad company’s refusal to allow blacks to ride in the “first-class” car, the status of African Americans as “second-class citizens” was established as a settled constitutional matter. Plessy froze the “Jim Crow” system in time and protected remnants of the black codes, including debt peonage and racial subordination. White supremacy as the nation’s law was upheld.
The case that overturned Plessy in 1954, Brown v. Board of Education, ruled that “separate was inherently unequal” and segregation was therefore unconstitutional. In this new context, it was the lone dissent of Justice John Marshall Harlan in Plessy in 1896 that gave guidance in the Brown ruling. As a result of the 1954 ruling, and the civil rights movement, the basic citizenship rights of blacks (e.g., public accommodations, housing, employment, and the right to vote) were reinstated for the first time since Reconstruction.
- Blaustein, Albert P. and Robert L. Zangrando, eds. 1991. Civil Rights and African Americans: A Documentary History. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
- Franklin, John Hope. 2006. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African America. New York: Knopf.
- Irons, Peter. 2006. A People ‘s History of the Supreme Court: The Men and Women Whose Cases and Decisions Have Shaped Our Constitution. Rev ed. New York: Penguin.
- Katz, William Loren, ed. 1968. The Suppressed Book about Slavery! New York: Arno Press and New York Times.
- Mandle, Jay R. 1978. The Roots of Black Poverty: The Southern Plantation Economy after the Civil War. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
- Thomas, Brook, ed. 1997. Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
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