Plessy V. Ferguson Background The Case The Decision

In 1890, the State of Louisiana passed a law that required separate accommodations for blacks and whites on railroads, including separate railway cars. Concerned, several black and white citizens in New Orleans formed an association dedicated to the repeal of that law. They eventually persuaded Homer Plessy, an octoroon (someone of seven-eighths Caucasian descent and one-eighth African descent), to test it. On June 7, 1892, Plessy purchased a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railway from New Orleans to Covington. The railroad company had been informed already as to Plessy's racial lineage, and after Plessy had taken a seat in the whites-only railway car, he was asked to vacate it and sit instead in the blacks-only car. Plessy refused and was arrested immediately.

Immediately after the end of the American Civil War in 18651865 is a common year starting on Sunday. Events January 31 American Civil War: Confederate General Robert E. Lee becomes general-in-chief. February 17 American Civil War: Columbia, South Carolina burns as Confederate forces flee from advancing Union forc, there were a number of efforts made during ReconstructionIn the history of the United States, Reconstruction was the period after the American Civil War when the southern states of the defeated Confederacy, which had seceded from the United States, were reintegrated into the Union. Laws and legislation Abraham to enforce civil rights of the newly freed slaves. After the end of ReconstructionIn the history of the United States, Reconstruction was the period after the American Civil War when the southern states of the defeated Confederacy, which had seceded from the United States, were reintegrated into the Union. Laws and legislation Abraham in 1877Events January 1 Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India by the Royal Titles Act, introduced by United Kingdom Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. January 8 Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle with the United States Cavalry ( Montana) Ja with the withdrawal of federal troops, these efforts were increasingly being reversed. With the end of federal control over southern governments and with the end of northern interest in protecting the rights of blacks, southern state governments began passing " Jim Crow" laws designed to prohibit blacks from using the same public accomodations as whites.

The Supreme Court had ruled, in the Civil Rights CasesThe Civil Rights Cases 109 U. 3 ( 1883) were a series of important United States Supreme Court cases. The decision was a ruling on five different cases from different courts on different reasoning. Read properly, the docket was: United States v. Stanley :, 109 U.S. 3 ( 1883Events January January 16 The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, establishing the United States Civil service, is passed January 19 The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires begins service ( Roselle, New Jersey) It was built by Thomas E), that the Fourteenth AmendmentAmendment XIV (the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution is one of the post- Civil War amendments and includes the due process and equal protection clauses (Section 1). It was adopted on July 28, 1868. Definition of citizen The first sect did not apply to actions taken by "individuals" that abridged other citizens' rights, only to actions by the federal or state governments. In that case, the Court had invalidated most of the Civil Rights Act of 1875The Civil Rights Act of 1875 proposed by Charles Sumner and Benjamin F. Butler in 1870, was passed on March 1, 1875. It guaranteed that everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was entitled to the same treatment in, "inns,, which had been an attempt by Radical Republicans in Congress to protect the civil rights of African Americans from infringement.

2 The Case

Plessy was remanded for trial in Orleans Parish, despite his objections that the Louisiana law was in violation of the Constitution of the United States. He was convicted and sentenced to pay a $25 fine.

Eventually the case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Plessy was represented by Albion Tourgée , a prominent lawyer of the day, and Samuel F. Phillips , while the defendant, Judge John Ferguson of the Louisiana court, was represented by Alexander Porter Morse .

Tourgée built his case upon violations of Plessy's rights under the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees the same rights to all citizens of the United States, and the equal protection of those rights, against the deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Tourgee argued that the law implied the inferiority of African-Americans.

3 The Decision

Announced on May 18, 1896, the 7-1 decision, with one abstention, upheld the Louisiana statute. Justice Henry B. Brown delivered the opinion of the court, while Justice David J. Brewer abstained, and Justice John Marshall Harlan delivered his famous dissent.

The court rejected Tourgée's arguments based on the Thirteenth Amendment, seeing no way in which the Louisiana statute violated it. In addition, the majority of the Court rejected the view that the Louisiana law fostered any inferiority of African-Americans, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, but held rather that the law merely separated the races as a matter of social policy. Justice Brown declared, "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." In other words, the Court held that state governments could bar blacks from public facilities based on traditional notions of racial inferiority.

Justice John Marshall Harlan I, himself a former Kentucky slaveholder, disagreed with the opinion of the majority. Harlan's dissent, which has been widely cited and served as an inspiration to the Civil Rights movement, argued in stirring language that the Reconstruction Amendments did, in fact, protect African-Americans from state action of the type at issue in Plessy. Harlan declared: "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." Harlan argued that Louisiana law at issue in the case, which forced separation of white and black passengers on railway cars, was a "badge of servitude" that degraded African-Americans, and correctly predicted that the Court's ruling would become as infamous as its ruling in the Dred Scott v. Sanford case.

The case helped cement the legal foundation for the doctrine of "separate but equal," which permitted separation of the races, but only as long as facilities for both races were of equal quality. Southern state governments refused, however, to provide African Americans with genuinely equal facilities and resources in the years after the Plessy decision.

Plessy legitimized the move towards segregation practices in the South begun earlier. Along with Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise address, delivered the same year, which accepted black social isolation from white society, Plessy provided an impetus for further segregation laws. In the ensuing decades, segregation statutes proliferated, reaching even to the federal government in Washington, D.C., which resegregated during Woodrow Wilson's administration in the 1910s.

As to the case's immediate aftermath, in January 1897 Homer Plessy pled guilty to violating the Louisiana statute and paid the $25 fine.

4 The Demise of Plessy

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 ( 1954), though formally limiting itself to the question of school segregation, effectively overturned Plessy.

In the wake of the Civil Rights movement, Southern segregation laws were rendered inoperative by provisions outlawing racial discrimination in public accommodations in Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

5 See also

List of United States Supreme Court Cases
Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1886)
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)

6 External links

Full text of the decision courtesy of Findlaw.com

U.S. civil rights history U.S. Supreme Court cases Thirteenth Amendment case law Fourteenth Amendment case law Fifteenth Amendment case law Equal protection cases

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1 Background