Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

It served as a controlling judicial precedent until it was overturned by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). 1890, the articulate black community of New Orleans protested vigorously. [21] It held that as long as a law that classified and separated people by their race was a reasonable and good faith exercise of a State's police power—and was not designed to oppress a particular class—the law was legal. [5] Despite its infamy, the decision itself has never been explicitly overruled. [44] Jim Crow laws and practices spread northward in response to a second wave of African-American migration from the South to northern and midwestern cities.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) Citation: Plessy vs. Ferguson, Judgement, Decided May 18, 1896; Records of the Supreme Court of the United States; Record Group 267; Plessy v. Ferguson, 163, #15248, National Archives.

the courts in the discharge of their solemn duty to maintain the supreme law

A. W. Tourgee and S. F. Phillips, for plaintiff in error. Plessy v. Ferguson originated in Louisiana, where, as a result of previous French influence, there was generally greater toleration of people of color than in the rest of the Deep South.

Plessy sought a writ of prohibition. Plessy V. Ferguson book. Although the court upheld the state 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. affirmed by three constitutional amendments and numerous laws passed by Congress. notwithstanding.”. Nonetheless, [12] Plessy was remanded for trial in Orleans Parish. John H. Ferguson, judge of the criminal District Court for the parish of Orleans, and setting forth in substance the following facts : That petitioner was a citizen of the' United States and a resident of the State of Louisiana, of mixed descent, in the proportion of seven … The Court rejected Plessy's lawyers' arguments that the Louisiana law inherently implied that black people were inferior, and gave great deference to American state legislatures' inherent power to make laws regulating health, safety, and morals—the "police power"—and to determine the reasonableness of the laws they passed. Although the majority opinion did not contain the phrase “separate but equal,” it gave constitutional sanction to laws designed to achieve racial segregation by means of separate and supposedly equal public facilities and services for African Americans and whites.


In reaching this conclusion he relied on the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), which found that racial discrimination against African Americans in inns, public conveyances, and places of public amusement “imposes no badge of slavery or involuntary servitude…but at most, infringes rights which are protected from State aggression by the XIVth Amendment.”. plane.”.

In the Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans, Tourgée argued that the law requiring “separate but equal accommodations” was unconstitutional. Upon being charged for boarding a "whites only" train car, Plessy's lawyers defended him by arguing that the law was unconstitutional. The Court rejected Plessy's lawyers' arguments that the Louisiana law inherently implied that black people were inferior, and gave great deference to American state legislatures' inherent power to make laws regulating health, safety, and morals—the "police power"—and to determine the reasonableness of the laws they passed.
the Federal Government, but from the states. It required either separate passenger coaches or partitioned coaches Despite the laws enforcing compulsory education, and the lack of public schools for Chinese children in Lum's area, the Supreme Court ruled that she had the choice to attend a private school. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved. When Plessy refused to leave the white car and move to the colored car, he was arrested and jailed.

Read reviews from world’s largest community for readers. Plessy is widely regarded as one of the worst decisions in U.S. Supreme Court history. Indeed, it was not until the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v.

[44] Jim Crow laws and practices spread northward in response to a second wave of African-American migration from the South to northern and midwestern cities. the personal liberties of citizens, white and black, in that State, and hostile 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 on it. Some established de jure segregated educational facilities, separate public institutions such as hotels and restaurants, separate beaches among other public facilities, and restrictions on interracial marriage, but in other cases segregation in the North was related to unstated practices and operated on a de facto basis, although not by law, among numerous other facets of daily life.

Tourgée and Phillips appeared in the courtroom to speak on behalf of Plessy. [26] This demonstrated, in other words, that a black person could be in the whites-only cars as long as it was obvious that they were a "social subordinate" or "domestic". [26], In an eloquent and now well-known passage, Harlan argued that even if many white Americans of the late 19th century considered themselves socially superior to Americans of other races, the U.S. Constitution was "color-blind", and could not permit any classes among citizens in matters of civil rights.[27].

The Supreme Court had ruled, in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), that the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to the actions of government, not to those of private individuals, and consequently did not protect persons against individuals or private entities who violated their civil rights. [31] The doctrine had been strengthened also by an 1875 Supreme Court decision that limited the federal government's ability to intervene in state affairs, guaranteeing to Congress only the power "to restrain states from acts of racial discrimination and segregation".

[33], Despite the pretense of "separate but equal", non-whites essentially always received inferior facilities and treatment.[34]. Yet the act did not conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment either, Brown argued, because that amendment was intended to secure only the legal equality of African Americans and whites, not their social equality.

of the 1950s and 1960s that systematic segregation under state With the cooperation of the East Louisiana Railroad, on June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, a mulatto (7/8 white), seated himself in a white compartment, was challenged by the conductor, and was arrested and charged with violating the state law. That petitioner was subsequently brought before the recorder of the city for preliminary examination and committed for trial to the criminal District Court for the parish of Orleans, where an information was filed against him in the matter above set forth, for a violation of the above act, which act the petitioner affirmed to be null and void, because in conflict with the Constitution of the United States; that petitioner interposed a plea to such information based upon the unconstitutionality of the act of the General Assembly, to which the district attorney, on behalf of the State, filed a demurrer; that, upon issue being joined upon such demurrer and plea, the court sustained the demurrer, overruled the plea, and ordered petitioner to plead over to the facts set forth in the information, and that, unless the judge of the said court be enjoined by a writ of prohibition from further proceeding in such case, the court will proceed to fine and sentence petitioner to imprisonment, and thus deprive him of his constitutional rights set forth in his said plea, notwithstanding the unconstitutionality of the act under which he was being prosecuted; that no appeal lay from such sentence, and petitioner was without relief or remedy except by writs of prohibition and certiorari. The thing to accomplish was, under the guise of giving equal accommodation for whites and blacks, to compel the latter to keep to themselves while traveling in railroad passenger coaches. The Court rejected the notion that the law marked black Americans with "a badge of inferiority", and stated that racial prejudice could not be overcome by legislation.[21]. Segregation of the railroads was even more objectionable to black citizens, The Creole, or 'gens de couleur libres,' freed descendants of African mothers and white fathers, created ambiguity in racial segregation laws. The U.S. Supreme Court’s majority held that such laws neither imposed a “badge of servitude” (in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery) nor infringed on the legal equality of blacks (in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, guaranteeing equal protection of the laws), because the accommodations were supposedly equal and separateness did not imply legal inferiority. Laws requiring Find out which documents We, The People, chose in a recent vote as the most influential in U.S. History. Later, they enlisted Homer Plessy, who was one-eighth black (an octoroon in the now-antiquated parlance), to serve as plaintiff. However, under Louisiana law, he was classified as black, and thus required to sit in the "colored" car.

law was unconstitutional as it applied to interstate travel. [19] The state legal brief was prepared by Attorney General Milton Joseph Cunningham of Natchitoches and New Orleans. In 1883, the Supreme Court struck down the 1875 act, ruling that the 14th The Court's opinion first dismissed any claim that the Louisiana law violated the Thirteenth Amendment, which, in the majority's opinion, did no more than ensure that black Americans had the basic level of legal equality that was necessary to abolish slavery. It would become one of the most famous decisions in American history.

[12] Plessy was remanded for trial in Orleans Parish. Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter from the Court's decision, writing that the U.S. Constitution "is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens", and so the law's distinguishing of passengers' races should have been found unconstitutional. In 1896, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Every one knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white people from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons.

Tourgee agreed to try the case pro bono.

In addition, the majority of the Court rejected the view that the Louisiana law implied any inferiority of blacks, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.