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HISTORIC SUPREME COURT DECISIONS
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court ruled on the
issue of equal rights for African Americans.
In the ruling, the Court upheld state laws that
segregated blacks and whites into separate
facilities. The ruling supported discrimination
against blacks that continued until the 1950s
and 1960s.
THE FACTS OF THE CASE
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Date
In 1890, Louisiana passed a law requiring
that railroad passenger cars be segregated.
That is, each train had to have a car for white
passengers and a separate car for black ones, or
separate sections in the same car.
The law angered African Americans in
Louisiana. They decided to break the law
deliberately to test its constitutionality in the
courts. In 1892, Homer Plessy—who was
part African American—entered a Louisiana
train and sat in the car reserved for whites.
The conductor asked him to move to the car
for blacks. Plessy refused. He was promptly
arrested, tried, and found guilty of breaking
the law.
Plessy appealed to the state supreme court.
His lawyer argued that the state law violated
his rights, under the Fourteenth Amendment to
the Constitution, to enjoy all the privileges of
being a citizen. The state supreme court denied
his claim and upheld the trial verdict. Plessy
then appealed to the Supreme Court.
Plessy’s lawyer argued that the separate
facilities were unequal and thus denied African
Americans their rights. “The object of such
a law,” he said, “is to separate the Negroes
from the whites in public conveyances for the
gratification and recognition of the sentiment
of white superiority and white supremacy
of right and power.” He finished by saying
“Justice is pictured blind and her daughter, the
Law, ought at least to be color blind.”
Historic Supreme Court Decisions
Unit 7 Resource Book
EVENTS SURROUNDING THE CASE
The case came in the midst of a movement
throughout the South to undo the gains that
African Americans made after the Civil War.
The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865,
had banned slavery. The Fourteenth, from
1868, declared African Americans as citizens
and said that no state could deny any person
“the equal protection of the laws.”
Soon, though, white Southerners began to
pass laws that stripped African Americans of
their rights. The Supreme Court made several
decisions in the 1870s and 1880s that supported
these Southern laws. In an 1873 decision, for
example, the Court drew on the Fourteenth
Amendment. The wording of the amendment
was that blacks were citizens “of the United
States and of the State in which they reside.”
This meant, said the Court, that the two types
of citizenship are distinct. It is possible for the
citizen to enjoy certain rights as a citizen of the
national government that he or she would not
enjoy as a state citizen.
Angered by these decisions, Congress
passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875. This law
said that “all persons within the jurisdiction
of the United States shall be entitled to
the full and equal enjoyment … of inns,
public conveyances on land and water,” and
other public accommodations. In 1883, the
Supreme Court declared the civil rights law as
unconstitutional. It said that Congress violated
the Fourteenth Amendment because the new
law would apply to private businesses. The
Amendment, the Court said, was meant to
apply only to state actions.
These decisions spurred Southern
legislatures to further limit African Americans’
rights. The 1890 Louisiana law calling for
segregated railroad cars was one example of
many such laws.
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Unit 7: America Transformed
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HISTORIC SUPREME COURT DECISIONS, CONTINUED
In an eight to one vote, the Court decided
against Plessy. The majority opinion,
written by Henry Billings Brown, upheld the
Fourteenth Amendment as the key to the case.
The Court agreed that if the facilities for blacks
were inferior to those for whites the law would
be unconstitutional. But the justices claimed
this was not the case.
Brown wrote: “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, as distinguished from political
equality.… Laws permitting … their separation
… do not necessarily imply the inferiority of
either race to the other.” In short, the argument
was that facilities can be separate, as long as
they are equal.
The issue, Brown said, was whether the
laws were reasonable. He concluded that they
were, stating that the Louisiana legislature
was “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.” The opinion went on to say that
if the law was seen as a mark of discrimination
against blacks, it was only because they felt it
that way, not because it was intended to be so.
Only one justice dissented from the
majority view: John Marshall Harlan of
Kentucky. In the Louisiana law, Harlan saw a
clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
He wrote: “The fundamental objection … to
the statute is that it interferes with the personal
freedom of citizens.… 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 guaranteed by the supreme law
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Unit 7: America Transformed
of the land are involved.… The thin disguise
of ‘equal’ accommodations for passengers in
railroad coaches will not mislead any one, nor
atone for the wrong this day done.”
THE IMPACT OF THE DECISION
Harlan’s dissent was eloquent, but ignored.
Plessy supported states’ ability to limit the
rights of blacks. States across the country
passed “Jim Crow” laws that called for
segregated restaurants, hotels, and other public
facilities. Not until the mid-1900s, when the
National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) began to challenge
these laws, did the federal courts begin to chip
away at segregation.
CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS
The case began when
Plessy deliberately set out to break the
Louisiana law and thus challenge it in the
court. Do you think that such an action is
a good idea? Explain.
1. Analyze Causes
The majority opinion
in Plessy says that it is reasonable for laws
to be based on the “usages, comforts and
traditions” of the people. How can such a
standard pose problems for members of
a minority?
2. Make Inferences
What is the central
point of Harlan’s dissenting opinion?
3. Find Main Ideas
Historic Supreme Court Decisions
Unit 7 Resource Book
Copyright by McDougal Littell, a division of Houghton Mifflin Company
THE COURT’S DECISION