Plessy v. Ferguson

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Plessy v. Ferguson

Legal decision

By: U.S. Supreme Court

Date: May 18, 1896

Source: Homer A. Plessy v. John H. Ferguson. 163 US 537 (1896).

About the Author: The U.S. Supreme Court, the highest judicial body in the United States, is composed of the chief justice and eight associate justices. All the justices are nominated by the U.S. President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, Associate Justice Henry Billings Brown (1836–1913) delivered the majority opinion of the Court.

INTRODUCTION

In the post-Civil War era, southern reconstruction, which included federal military control over portions of the southern United States, the reintegration of former states that made up the Confederate States of America, and the absorption of four million slaves into the American economy and civil society, led to the legal and social enforcement of segregation of the races. While the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawed slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment was required to make former slaves citizens and to provide legal grounds for equal protection rights. Although the Fifteenth Amendment granted all men the right to vote in the United States, a carefully constructed system of legal and social segregation crafted in the southern United States after the Civil War effectively kept many former slaves from voting and enjoying the full benefits and protections of U.S. citizenship.

Andrew Johnson, a former Tennessee Senator, a Democrat, and the Vice-President of Republican President Abraham Lincoln, assumed the presidency after Lincoln's assassination. Though Johnson had been selected as Lincoln's running mate in 1864 because of his anti-secession views, he was in no way a supporter of equal rights for African Americans. A strong supporter of the U.S. Constitution over states' rights, Johnson angered fellow southern legislators; in essence, his views alienated both Republicans and Democrats, northerners and southerners alike. Reconstruction placed certain requirements on Confederate states before their re-admittance to the Union—acceptance of the Fourteenth Amendment, acceptance of African American suffrage, an oath of allegiance, and the establishment of civil governments. Many states balked at the provisions and passed "black codes" which restricted African American labor rights, created forced apprenticeships for black children, and established stringent vagrancy laws that could result in forced labor for African Americans without identification.

In response, the U.S. Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of March 1867, which divided the South into districts, which the U.S. military would occupy. Only those states that accepted the reconstruction provisions would escape military occupation. Southern states complied, in part because of vetoes from President Johnson on such issues as further black rights and restrictions on Confederate leaders holding political office. The battle between Johnson and the U.S. Congress led to his impeachment in 1868, although the Senate did not convict him. Republicans charged that Johnson's role in weakening African American rights in the antebellum South helped to foster racial separation and increased violence aimed at former slaves. In the meantime, southern states continued to pass segregation laws, cementing the system of the racial separation in the South.

In 1890, Louisiana passed a law separating train coaches by color. Homer Plessy, who was one-eighth black, purchased a railway ticket on the East Louisiana Railway on June 7, 1892, with the intent of challenging that law. Plessy belonged to a group called the Citizens' Committee of African Americans and Creoles. The group had hired a lawyer to represent Plessy should charges be brought against him. When Plessy made his racial status known to the conductor and sat in the "whites only" section, he was asked to leave. He refused and was arrested. The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896.

PRIMARY SOURCE

Mr. Justice BROWN … 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 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.

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.

It is claimed by the plaintiff in error that, in a 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.

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…. 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.

The judgment of the court below is therefore affirmed.

Mr. Justice HARLAN dissenting.

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.

The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indis-solubly 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 legalgrounds.

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.

[Edited from original language, taken from Westlaw, by project editor.]

SIGNIFICANCE

Plessy's lawyer, white New York attorney Albion Tourgée, had successfully represented black clients in rights cases, and the Citizens' Committee of African Americans and Creoles hired him based on his experience. The Citizens' Committee had been successful in another court case in which a Louisiana district court ruled that segregated railcar laws for interstate transportation were unconstitutional. The group hoped to duplicate that success for intrastate travel as well.

In representing Plessy, Tourgée argued that Louisiana violated both the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution when crafting and implementing the 1890 Separate Car Law. Plessy's right to "equal protection" under the law was violated by prohibiting him from using "whites only" railcars, according to Tourgée, while segregation itself implied the inferiority of African Americans, which Tourgée argued violated the Thirteenth Amendment.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected outright the notion that Homer Plessy's rights had been violated regarding the Thirteenth Amendment, for the railcar law in no way enslaved blacks or returned them to forced servitude; creating an atmosphere of inferiority for one race was not the same as slavery. On the issue of the Fourteenth Amendment, Justice Henry Billings Brown makes the distinction that legal rights are quite different from social policy. According to the court's decision, separate is not inherently unequal. As Justice Brown states in the excerpt above, "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." The U.S. Supreme Court ruling affirmed the Louisiana's 1890 Separate Car Law.

Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former slave owner and the only voice of dissent in the seven to one ruling, vehemently disagreed with his fellow justices on the grounds that the law's intent is clear. "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."

Homer Plessy paid a twenty-five dollar fine under the terms of the Louisiana law. The 1896 decision set the tone for racial segregation in the United States until the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which rejected the "separate but equal" concept. In the intervening fifty-eight years, segregated schools, neighborhoods, restaurants, private clubs, public restrooms, transportation, and other kinds of race-based separations were completely legal in states that enacted such legislation.