Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
Supreme Court decision upholding racial
segregation. The state of Louisiana in 1890 required
railroads to provide “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.” The railroads objected to the legislation because of the additional cost it imposed in providing separate cars. The Louisiana law, however, had little to do with economic efficiency; instead, it represented an attempt by white legislators to restrict racial mixing. In response, a group of Creoles and
African Americans in
New Orleans organized the Citizens' Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law. In 1892, Homer Plessy, a person who was one‐eighth black and therefore appeared to be white, agreed to test the law. Plessy purchased a ticket on a train traveling solely within the state of Louisiana and made sure that the train's conductor understood that he was a “colored” person. When the conductor ordered Plessy from an all‐white car, he refused to leave and was arrested. At his trial before Judge John H. Ferguson, Plessy argued that the Louisiana law violated the Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Amendments to the federal
Constitution. The trial judge disagreed, as did the Louisiana Supreme Court, giving Plessy and his supporters the opportunity they wanted to test the meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition against
slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment's guaranteeing to all citizens “equal protection” of the laws.
Speaking for an 8–1 Supreme Court majority, Justice Henry Billings Brown, an admiralty lawyer from Detroit, disposed of Plessy's case in a precedent‐setting fashion. Brown found that the Thirteenth Amendment applied only to actions intended to reintroduce slavery and that distinctions resting on color and race, by themselves, did not constitute slavery. Brown also proclaimed that the Louisiana law's requirement that passengers be separated on the basis of race did not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, since both races enjoyed equal facilities.
Brown rested his opinion on two important nonconstitutional assumptions: first, that segregation by race was not a mark of inferiority, and, second, that race‐mixing enjoyed little public support. To prove his point that separate but equal facilities were acceptable, he cited an 1849 Massachusetts decision,
Roberts v.
City of Boston, that upheld segregation by race in the Boston public schools. According to Brown, as long as the facilities provided were equal, even if separate, the state had satisfied the constitutional burden imposed by the equal protection clause.
Justice John Marshall
Harlan, a former slaveholder from Kentucky, issued the lone dissent. Harlan insisted that the Thirteenth Amendment did apply, since segregation was a “badge of servitude” and that, in any case, the “Constitution is color‐blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Harlan's dissent proved prophetic. In 1954, the Supreme Court in
Brown v. Board of Education overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine written into the Constitution by
Plessy v.
Ferguson and began the process of dismantling legally imposed racial segregation in the United States.
See also
Civil Rights Cases;
Gilded Age;
Racism.
Bibliography
Charles A. Lofgren , The Plessy Case, 1987.
Kermit L. Hall
