Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark Supreme Court case decided in 1896, which upheld the legality of racial segregation under the doctrine of "separate but equal." The case arose when Homer Plessy, a man of mixed race, was arrested for sitting in a whites-only railway car in Louisiana, challenging the state's Separate Car Act of 1890. Plessy's argument was rooted in the belief that the segregation law violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court's majority opinion, delivered by Justice Henry B. Brown, concluded that while the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equality before the law, it does not mandate social equality or prohibit racial segregation. Justice John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenter, argued that such segregation imposed a "badge of servitude" on African Americans and proclaimed that the Constitution should be "color blind." The ruling provided a constitutional basis for the Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in the South. It wasn't until the mid-20th century, particularly with the decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, that the Court began to dismantle the Plessy doctrine, ultimately declaring it unconstitutional.
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Plessy v. Ferguson
Date: May 18, 1896
Citation: 163 U.S.
Issue: Segregation
Significance: The Supreme Court held that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not prohibit government-mandated segregation as long as accommodations were equal for both races.
During the late nineteenth century, southern state legislatures enacted many laws requiring segregation. Louisiana’s Separate Car Act of 1890 provided for “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races” on passenger railways within the state. In a test case, Homer Plessy, who was classified as “colored” because of his one-eighth African ancestry, was arrested for refusing to leave a car reserved for whites. Plessy claimed that the law was unconstitutional under both the Thirteenth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment.
By a 7–1 vote, the Supreme Court sustained the Louisiana law. Writing for the majority, Justice Henry B. Brown narrowly interpreted the words of both amendments. Although the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to guarantee “the absolute equality of the races before the law,” it did not require social equality or racial intermingling. Brown could see no evidence that segregation “stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority,” and he assumed that the laws were incapable of changing long-established customs. The lone dissenter, former slave owner Justice John Marshall Harlan, argued that racial separation amounted to imposing “a badge of servitude” on African Americans, and he wrote, “Our Constitution is color blind and neither knows or tolerates classes among its citizens.”
The Plessydoctrine of separate but equal provided the constitutional foundation for the Jim Crow system, which enforced racial segregation in public facilities in the South. Beginning in the 1930s, the Court began to chip away at the doctrine and to demand that public facilities really be equal. It was not until Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which outlawed racial segregation in schools, that the Court repudiated the Plessy precedent.
Bibliography
Elliott, Mark Emory. Color-Blind Justice : Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 12 Jan. 2016.
Hillstrom, Laurie Collier. Plessy v. Ferguson. Detriot: Omnigraphics, 2014.
Kelley, Blair Murphy. Right to Ride : Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson. Chapel Hill: UNCP, 2010. eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 12 Jan. 2016.
Lofgren, Charles A. The Plessy Case : A Legal-Historical Interpretation. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 12 Jan. 2016.
Mackey, Thomas C., ed. A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2014. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 12 Jan. 2016.
Plessy v. Ferguson. 163 US 537. Supreme Court of the US. 1896. MasterFILE Complete. Web. 12 Jan. 2016.