Plessy v. Ferguson

In 1890, Louisiana passed a law requiring African Americans to ride in railroad cars separate from whites. To protest the law, a light-skinned African American named Homer Plessy (1862–1925) boarded a whites- only train car. He was immediately arrested, tried, and convicted by a local judge of violating the state's racial segregation laws.

Plessy appealed the ruling, and his case eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. The Court determined that Plessy had not been denied his rights because the separate railroad car provided for blacks was equal to the cars provided whites. It held that separation of the races was not illegal, and that “separate but equal” accommodations did not indicate that blacks were inferior to whites.

Only one judge on the Supreme Court dissented (disagreed) with the verdict. Justice John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911) was a former slave owner who had changed his opinion after the American Civil War (1861–65). Harlan insisted that the U.S. Constitution was color-blind, that all citizens were equal under the law, and that the forced separation of the races degraded African Americans.

The separate-but-equal doctrine allowed states to restrict African Americans from public areas and services. Soon, signs reading “Whites Only” and “Colored” appeared everywhere. Curfews were established for African Americans, and they were forced to use separate entrances and exits at places such as libraries and theaters.

The Plessy ruling stood for over sixty years until the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling of 1954. It said that separate schools for blacks and whites denied blacks the same kinds of educational opportunities afforded to whites.