Plessy vs. Ferguson 1896

Background Activists in Louisiana were looking for a person to help them challenge the Separate Car Act in Louisiana. The act made blacks ride in separate train cars from whites. They found a man who was 1/8 black named, Homer Plessy, that could pass as a white man to challenge the constitutionality of the act. On June 7, 1892 Homer Plessy would make a trip on the East Louisiana Railroad. After buying his ticket and taking his seat he would tell the conductor of his race and refusal to switch cars. The penalty for sitting in the wrong car was either 20 days in jail or a $25 fine. He was then arrested and spent one night in jail and released in the morning on bond.

Court Case Plessy argued that the acts violated his 13 th and 14 th amendment rights. The judge was John Howard Ferguson, who had recently declared that train cars traveling in more than one state could not operate under the Separate Car Act. 13 th Amendment- Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. 14 th Amendment- No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Court rules in favor of the state, saying that the state has the power to segregate railroad cars operating solely in one state. Plessy appealed to the Louisiana supreme court. The decision by the lower court was upheld and so was the penalty.

Supreme Court Case Plessy appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in He argued that the ruling against him was unconstitutional because the acts violated his 13 th and 14 th amendment rights. The courts decision endorsed the idea of “separate but equal.” The shocking ruling was against Homer Plessy The ruling was 8-1 in favor of the state. Plessy would lose his right to be treated equally with whites in America.

Majority Opinion Horace Gray Melville W. Fuller David J. Brewer Henry B. Brown George Shiras, Jr. Edward D. White Rufus W. Peckham Stephen J. Field John M. Harlan Dissenting Opinion Dissenting Opinion

Justice Henry Brown wrote: That the Separate Car Act does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races -- a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color -- has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races...The object of the Fourteenth Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social equality, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Justice John Harlan wrote: 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...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 present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution.

My Opinion Based on future events after the case in the U.S., I feel that the ruling given by the supreme court was wrong. Using the ruling, segregation would become an institution throughout the south. Almost all public facilities would adopt the “separate but equal” policies as a way to segregate African Americans from whites.

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