In 1896, the United States Supreme Court passed a decision that would greatly affect American society for the next fifty-eight years, and the repercussions of which are still felt today, more than one hundred years later. The case in question was Plessy versus Ferguson, an appellate case from the Louisiana Supreme Court. Homer Plessy- a colored man- had been arrested for refusing to move to the designated “black” car of a Louisiana train, and his legal defense team was determined to fight his conviction- and the legal racial segregation that it stood for- all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. For a nation that was still in the process of reconstructing itself after a bloody civil war, one of the key political issues at stake was the legal status of a large group of people who had formerly been kept as slaves. By upholding Plessy’s original conviction, the Supreme Court paved the way for widespread racial segregation with the precedent that races could be separated, as long as they were equal in that separation.
The first harbingers of what came to be known as Jim Crow legislation came with the introduction of various state railroad segregation laws, beginning with Florida in 1887 and followed by every other Southern state over the next few years. When Louisiana passed its railroad law in 1890, a group of African-American civic leaders questioned its constitutionality. Although this same group had successfully averted an effort to disenfranchise Louisiana’s black community, they failed to prevent the railroad law. Undaunted, they hatched a plan to directly challenge the law.
With the cooperation of a railroad company that also disagreed with the segregation law, a situation was set up where Homer Plessy, a man who described himself as “seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African” (Brands 222), sat in the “white” car. He was duly asked to move to the “black” car. He refused, and was arrested.
Plessy’s defense in his trial was based on the argument that the Jim Crow segregation “abridge[d]… the rights secured by the XIIIth and XIVth Amendments of the Federal Constitution” (222). The New Orleans court was not convinced by this argument, and while the pro-segregation community applauded its decision, Plessy went first to the Louisiana Supreme Court, then to the Supreme Court of the United States. The stakes were high: Albion Winegar Tourgée, Plessy’s lawyer, said “It is of the utmost consequence that we should not have a decision against us, as it is a matter of boast with the court that it has never reversed itself on a constitutional question” (224). If the Court found against Plessy, it would set a legal precedent that would encourage all manner of segregation laws, and appealing against such laws would be difficult given the Court’s tendency not to overturn precedents.
Despite Tourgée’s best efforts, the Court ruled against Plessy with a 7-1 majority, and for nearly sixty years Plessy v. Ferguson would justify Jim Crow’s policy of near-total segregation.
Two key political issues were initially at stake in Plessy v. Ferguson. The first was the debate that initiated Homer Plessy’s setup in that Louisiana train: how could the State claim that races were being treated with fair equality when it actively prevented them from interacting with each other? The second had to do with the application of the 13th and 14th Constitutional Amendments, and whether segregation amounted to a form of slavery or an abridgment of the “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” (U.S. Constitution). A third issue arose in the course of the proceedings: in the case of someone of mixed race- it was no coincidence that Plessy happened to be such a person- what guidelines should be followed to determine if someone is “white” or “black?” “It may be said that all those should be classed as colored in whom appears a visible admixture of colored blood. By what law? By what justice? Why not count everyone as white in whom is visible any trace of white blood?” demanded Tourgée (Brands 226).
The Louisiana Supreme Court opted to address the first issue on the basis of an 1849 school segregation case from Massachusetts: “prejudice, if it exists, is not created by law and cannot be changed by law” (223). If there was anything unequal about segregation, it came as a result of attitude, not law. As such, it was beyond the reach of the law, and the U.S. Supreme Court was happy to allow it to remain so. The Court was not impressed by the second issue. When Justice Henry Brown delivered the verdict, he said:
“That [the Separate Car Act] does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery…is too clear for argument…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 A]mendment 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, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either” (Cozzens).
The State of Louisiana, in response to the third issue, argued that “every man must know the difference between a negro and a white man,” and that, in cases where mistakes were made, there was nothing preventing a wronged party from suing for damages.
By affirming Plessy’s conviction, the Supreme Court set the very precedent that Tourgée and the African American leaders were trying so desperately to avoid; the Jim Crow legislators now had a court decision indicating that races could be treated equally, but kept separate. The outcome of Plessy v. Ferguson was to have significant implications, particularly in the South. Before long, the railroad segregation laws expanded to include separate “restaurants, theatres, restrooms, and public schools” (Cozzens). It was only with the advent of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s that the Supreme Court finally changed its position on the issue of segregation. Plessy v. Ferguson was the landmark case that introduced Jim Crow to the United States; 1954’s Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka was the equally significant ruling that eventually brought the era of Jim Crow to an end.
Plessy v. Ferguson was a deliberate attempt to confront a disturbing trend in society, and nip it in the bud. That the attempt failed is one of the more tragic episodes in the history of the United States. Bloody wars have come and gone, and they have been tragedies in their own way, but Jim Crow has left a legacy that is still evident today. Without enforced segregation, the two old classes- white masters and black slaves- would have had sixty more years in which to grow past their historical differences. Instead, Jim Crow rubbed salt in the wounds, and only now, a century later, can those wounds really be said to be healing.
Brands, H. W. The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1995.
Cozzens, Lisa. After the Civil War: Plessy v. Ferguson. 17 Sept. 1999.
U.S. Constitution. Cornell University. 21 April 2002.
You all need more background information and more details about the Plessy V. Ferguson case to allow Middle School Students to do better on their research THank YoU!
i feel that he is not a colored man barely can even say hes mixed because 1/8 black is nothin compared to 7/8 white