As Lofgren and others have shown, contemporary newspaper editors were much more concerned about the nations most recent economic crisis, the Panic of 1893, its overseas forays to the South and West, and the relative power of unions, farmers, immigrants and factories. 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 respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. He changed his plea to guilty and paid the $25 fine. One of the most famous Supreme Court decisions, the case solidified the "separate but equal" doctrine as the law of the land and allowed racially divisive "Jim Crow" regulations to take hold in southern states. For the rest of his life, Plessy lived quietly in New Orleans, working as a labourer, warehouseman, and clerk. There he met and married in July 1866, Virginia Butler Earhart, daughter of Thomas Jefferson Earhart, a staunch and outspoken abolitionist from Pennsylvania. On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessya mixed-race shoemakerwas arrested for sitting in a whites-only East Louisiana Railroad car and violating the state's . The Court 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 needed to abolish slavery. ), While the constitutional arguments of Tourge et al are best left to legal experts, I continue to be fascinated by the one they crafted about the indeterminacy of race and the reputational risks (and rewards) posed to those who couldnt (and could) pass for white. At Plessys trial in U.S. District Court, Judge John H. Ferguson dismissed his contention that the act was unconstitutional. [15], Plessy petitioned the state district criminal court to throw out the case, State v. Homer Adolph Plessy,[16] on the grounds that the state law requiring East Louisiana Railroad to segregate trains had denied him his rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution,[17] which provided for equal treatment under the law. Plessy petitioned for a writ of error from the Supreme Court of the United States where Judge John Howard Ferguson was named in the case brought before the United States Supreme Court because he had been named in the petition to the Louisiana Supreme Court. As Lofgren shows in his watershed account, the question was, did a man at the time ofPlessyhave to be one-fourth black to be considered colored, as was the case in Michigan, or one-sixteenth as in North Carolina, or one-eighth as in Georgia; or were such judgments better left to juries as in South Carolina or, better yet, to train conductors as in Louisiana? Read all 100 Facts onThe Root. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the separate but equal doctrine. [13] After Plessy took a seat in the whites-only railway car, he was asked to vacate it, and sit instead in the blacks-only car. Why may it [the state] not require all red-headed people to ride in a separate car? [33] Harlan said that this showed that the Louisiana law only allowed black people to be in white-only cars if it was obvious that they were "social subordinates" or "domestics". Clarence Thomas called affirmative action 'critical' before comparing 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. Had he answered negatively, nothing might have. No. Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc. Monell v. Department of Social Services of the City of New York, Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, Inyo County v. Paiute-Shoshone Indians of the Bishop Community, Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee. 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. Updated: January 11, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009. 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 upon it.. Ferguson was born the third and last child to Baptist parents (John H. Ferguson & Sarah Davis Luce) on June 10, 1838 in Chilmark, Massachusetts. After . Harvard Law School Professor Kenneth Mack explains what the shameful decision meant, and why it still matters in 2021. Separate But Equal - US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute In December 1892, the court upheld Judge Ferguson's ruling,[19] and denied Plessy's attorneys' subsequent request for a rehearing. This exception allowed black women who were nannies to white children to be in the white-only train cars. It also legitimized laws in the North requiring "racial" segregation, such as in the Boston school segregation case noted by Justice Brown in his majority opinion. Why may it not require every white mans house to be painted white and every colored mans black? 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. 2 Act 111, 1890 of theLouisiana Separate Car Act, which, after requiring all railway companies [to] provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races in Sec. The truth is that no one involved inPlessyknew they were on a longer march toBrown,or that their case would become one of the most recognizable in history, or that the sentence that the Supreme Court handed down would take up less than a sentence really, just three words in the American mind. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. 'Plessy v. Ferguson': Who Was Plessy? The case was brought by Homer Plessy and eventually led to the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision by the United States Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation. Making the Louisiana law even more absurd, in Harlans view, had been the sole exception the statute had carved out for nurses attending children of the other race. In other words, it was OK for black Mammies to ride white cars with white babies, but not with their own (or with white adults, for that matter), because in those instances alone, the unspoken racial hierarchy was clear: Black nurses, at least as a matter of perception, still bore the markings of slaves. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, Massachusetts Board of Retirement v. Murgia, New York City Transit Authority v. Beazer. Find educational resources related to this program - and access to thousands of curriculum-targeted digital resources for the classroom at PBS LearningMedia. FERGUSON. 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. Instead, as historian Keith Weldon Medleywrites, when train conductor J.J. Dowling asks Plessy what all conductors have been trained to ask under Louisianas 2-year-old Separate Car Act Are you a colored man? Plessy answers, Yes, prompting Dowling to order him to the colored car. Plessys answer started off a chain of events that led the Supreme Court to read separate but equal into the Constitution in 1896, thus allowing racially segregated accommodations to become the law of the land. Updates? Plessy v. Ferguson established the constitutionality of laws mandating separate but equalpublic accommodations for African Americans and whites. 210. Biography Ferguson was born the third and last child to Baptist parents (John H. Ferguson & Sarah Davis Luce) on June 10, 1838 in Chilmark, Massachusetts. A Massachusetts native, Louisiana judge John Howard Ferguson presided over Homer Adolph Plessy's trial for violating the Louisiana law prohibited integrated rail travel in the state. [51]:6, The separate facilities and institutions accorded to the African-American community were consistently inferior[53] to those provided to the White community. In 1954, in Brown vs. Board of Education, the Court overturned Plessy, . The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. He is buried with his wife and other Earhart family members in Lafayette Cemetery # 1 in the old part of New Orleans. Historian Rogers Smith noted on the subject that "lawmakers frequently admitted, indeed boasted, that such measures as complex registration rules, literacy and property tests, poll taxes, white primaries, and grandfather clauses were designed to produce an electorate confined to a white race that declared itself supreme", notably rejecting the 14th and 15th Amendments to the American Constitution. [25] The state legal brief was prepared by Attorney General Milton Joseph Cunningham of Natchitoches and New Orleans. It takes only 20 minutes for Homer Plessy to get bounced from his train, but another four years for him to receive a final decision from the United States Supreme Court. The Jim Crow Laws: The Plessy Vs. Ferguson Case | ipl.org While many consider the civil rights movement to have begun in the 1950s, communities were organizing for equal rights much earlier in the U.S. Plessy v. Ferguson Case Summary - FindLaw On November 18, 1892, Judge John Howard Ferguson ruled against Plessy. [27] According to the Court, the question in any case that involved a racial segregation law was whether the law was reasonable, and the Court gave State legislatures broad discretion to determine the reasonableness of the laws they passed. As plaintiff in the test case the committee chose a person of mixed race in order to support its contention that the law could not be consistently applied, because it failed to define the white and coloured races. Background - Plessy v. Ferguson - LibGuides at Law Library of Louisiana 1138 41 L.Ed. They filed their appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 5, 1893. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), Russell Lee/Library Of Congress/Getty Images, Plessy v. Ferguson: Background and Context, Supreme Court Ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, PBS: The Supreme Court The First Hundred Years, https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson. What did Plessy v. Ferguson establish? Du Bois in other regimes, in other nations, he might not be viewed as black. Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass father was white. Fifty of the 100 Amazing Facts will be published on The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross website. Ferguson was a case of the Supreme Court in 1892 after passenger Homer Plessy traveled on the Louisiana railroad and refused to sit in a car for blacks only. Plessy v. Ferguson | Summary, Ruling, Background, & Impact Board of Education of Topeka (1954). [49], New Orleans historian Keith Weldon Medley, author of We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson, The Fight Against Legal Segregation, said the words in Justice Harlan's "Great Dissent" were taken from papers filed with the court by "The Citizen's Committee". Articles with the HISTORY.com Editors byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan, Matt Mullen and Christian Zapata. After the state Supreme Court affirmed the district courts ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari, and oral arguments were heard on April 13, 1896. How did Plessy v. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". [12] The railroad company, which had opposed the law on the grounds that it would require the purchase of more railcars, had been previously informed of Plessy's racial lineage, and the intent to challenge the law. [13] Plessy was remanded for trial in Orleans Parish. As a controlling legal precedent, it prevented constitutional challenges to racial segregation for more than half a century until it was finally overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brownv. [15] No. After refusing to leave the car at the conductors insistence, he was arrested and jailed. In Plessy's case, however, he concluded that the state could choose to regulate railroad companies that operated solely within the state of Louisiana and declared the Separate Car Act to be constitutional in intrastate cases.[2]. As Southern Black people witnessed with horror the dawn of the Jim Crow era, members of the Black community in New Orleans decided to mount a resistance. Whatever a jurisdictions rule, to men like Plessy, Tourge and his legal associatesLouis Martinet, a Creole attorney and publisher of the New Orleans Crusader, and white attorney and former Confederate Army Pfc. Four days later, Plessy petitioned the Louisiana Supreme Court for a writ of prohibition to stop his criminal trial. States which had successfully integrated elements of their society abruptly adopted oppressive legislation that erased reconstruction era efforts. Plessy took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court as Plessy v. Ferguson. [44] Maltz has argued that "modern commentators have often overstated Harlan's distaste for race-based classifications", pointing to other aspects of decisions in which Harlan was involved. A group of prominent black, creole of color, and white creole New Orleans residents formed a civil rights group called the Comit des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens). of races. (Ill let you guess which race almost always came out on top. "[26], On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court issued a 71[b] decision against Plessy that upheld the constitutionality of Louisiana's train car segregation laws. The case stemmed from an 1892. His subject areas include philosophy, law, social science, politics, political theory, and religion. Associated Subjects: Ferguson, John H. (Judge) Plessy v. Ferguson strengthened racial segregation in public accommodations and services throughout the United States and ensured its continuation for more than half a century by giving it constitutional sanction. [46] Both point to a passage of Harlan's Plessy dissent as particularly troubling:[47][48], There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. However, the judge presiding over his case, John Howard Ferguson, ruled that Louisiana had the right to regulate railroad companies while they operated within state boundaries. (Authored & Extensively Researched by John H. Ferguson IV, Great, Great Grandson). In 1892, on a steamy spring day in New Orleans, Louisiana, a man a . Plessy v. Ferguson was the first major inquiry into the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendments (1868) equal-protection clause, which prohibits the states from denying equal protection of the laws to any person within their jurisdictions. The court rendered its decision one month later, on May 18. (For similar reasons, some of those tracking thetwo affirmative action casespending before the current Supreme Court are concerned that those cases may get drowned by more pressing headlines.) 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, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Plessy v. Ferguson was case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States on May, 18, 1896 that ruled that "separate, but equal" facilities were constitutional. There is no caste here. On February 12, 2009, they partnered with the Crescent City Peace Alliance and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts in placing a historical marker at the corner of Press Street and Royal Street, the site of Homer Plessy's arrest in New Orleans in 1892.[3]. In 1896, the Supreme Court issued one of the most shameful decisions in US history, Plessy vs. Ferguson. The Supreme Court Has Kicked the Door Wide Open to Jim Crow-Style Intrastate railroads were among many segregated public facilities the verdict sanctioned; others included buses, hotels, theaters, swimming pools and schools. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. As Justice Joseph Bradleywrote for the majority,there must be some stage in the process of his elevation when he [a man who has emerged from slavery] takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws.. Plessy had been born a free man and was fair-skinned. The foundation strives to teach the history of civil rights through film, art, and public programs designed to create understanding of this historic case and its legacy on the American conscience. As highlighted last week, the legal history of Jim Crow accelerated in 1883, when the Supreme Court struck down the federalCivil Rights Act of 1875for using the 14th Amendment to root out private (as opposed to state) discrimination. Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter from the decision. While Ferguson had dismissed an earlier test case because it involved inter-state travel, the federal government's exclusive jurisdiction, in Plessy's all-in-state case, the judge ruled that . Plessy, "American courts . [58], In 2009, a marker was placed[13] at the corner of Press and Royal Streets, near where Plessy had boarded his train. Plessy v. Ferguson | Oyez For most,Plessy v. Fergusononly acquired its notoriety years later as a result of theBrownschool desegregation cases and of future lawyers like Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall, who found inspiration for their strides against Jim Crow segregation inPlessys lone dissent by Justice John Marshall Harlan of all the justices a Southerner and a former slave holder. They also discussed the role that Judge John Ferguson played in the case. As historian C. Vann Woodward pointed out in a 1964 article about Plessy v. Ferguson, white and Black Southerners mixed relatively freely until the 1880s, when state legislatures passed the first laws requiring railroads to provide separate cars for Negro or colored passengers. Plessy v. Ferguson challenged Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890, which . Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson, two of the descendants of both participants of the Supreme Court case, announced the creation of the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation for Education, Preservation and Outreach. [17] Two legal briefs were submitted on Plessy's behalf. Homer Plessy Vs. Fergusen: Supreme Court Case 548 Words3 Pages Plessy v Fergusen was yet another court case where "separate but equal" was not implementing equality. [citation needed], In 2009, Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson, descendants of participants on both sides of the 1896 Supreme Court case, announced establishing the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation for Education and Reconciliation. How many mysteries have begun with the line, A man gets on a train ? In its ruling, the Court denied that segregated railroad cars for Black people were necessarily inferior. Although the United States Supreme Court ruled against Plessy in 1896, their arguments produced Justice John Marshall Harlan's "Great Dissent". At the same time, for the sake of argument, Brown wrote, even if ones color was critical to his reputation (and thus constituted a property right), he and the Court were unable to see how [the Louisiana] statute deprives him of, or in any way affects his right to, such property. (Perhaps this was because attorneys for the state had already conceded that the law, as written, could be interpreted as having a crack in its immunity shield for erring rail lines and conductors.). NowPlessyslawyers had what theyd hoped for: an opportunity to argue on a national stage. Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson, descendants of the principals in the Plessy v. Ferguson court case, in front of a historical marker in New Orleans on June 7, 2011. Plessy appeared before Judge John Howard Ferguson on October 13, 1892, in State of Louisiana v. . 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. [56] While Plessy v. Ferguson was never explicitly overruled by the Supreme Court, it is effectively dead as a precedent;[57] the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled that segregation on interstate transport violated the Interstate Commerce Act in the 1955 case Keys v. Carolina Coach Co. [51]:1618 The principles of Plessy v. Ferguson were affirmed in Lum v. Rice (1927), which upheld the right of a Mississippi public school for white children to exclude a Chinese American girl. [41], Despite the pretense of "separate but equal", non-whites essentially always received inferior facilities and treatment, if they received them at all. They hired Albion Tourge, a Reconstruction-era judge and social reformer, as their legal counsel. Florida became the first state to mandate segregated railroad cars in 1887, followed in quick succession by Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana and other states by the end of the century. The group was dedicated to repealing the Separate Car Act and fighting its implementation. That same year, both his son Walter Judson Ferguson in the month of June, and his wife, Virginia Butler Earhart Ferguson, in the month of September, pre-deceased him. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) - U.S. Conlawpedia Plessy v. Ferguson was important because it essentially established the constitutionality of racial segregation. While today we might call proponents of those theories quacks, they were regarded (for the most part) as leading scientists of their day men with college degrees and titles who, even in those rare cases when they were sympathetic to black people and their rights, felt strongly that mixing too closely with whites would lead either to black extinction through a race war or dilution by way of absorption.
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