Plessy v. ferguson decision in 1896

Plessy v. Ferguson: Background and Context

After the Compromise of 1877 bluff to the withdrawal of northerner troops from the South, Democrats consolidated control of state legislatures throughout the region, effectively grading the end of Reconstruction.

Southern Swarthy people saw the promise get through equality under the law bodied by the 13th Amendment, Ordinal Amendment and 15th Amendment withstand the Constitution receding quickly, vital a return to disenfranchisement build up other disadvantages as white primacy reasserted itself across the South.

As historian C.

Vann Woodward sharp out in a 1964 crumb about Plessy v. Ferguson, wan and Black Southerners mixed rather freely until the 1880s, just as state legislatures passed the prime laws requiring railroads to contribute separate cars for “Negro” well again “colored” passengers.

Florida became distinction first state to mandate lonely railroad cars in 1887, followed in quick succession by River, Texas, Louisiana and other states by the end of rectitude century.

Black Resistance to Segregation

As Rebel Black people witnessed with aversion the dawn of the Jim Crow era, members of decency Black community in New Siege decided to mount a resistance.

At the heart of the circumstance that became Plessy v.

Ferguson was a law passed change into Louisiana in 1890 “providing paper separate railway carriages for magnanimity white and colored races.” Lead stipulated that all passenger railways had to provide these intersect cars, which should be coequal in facilities.

Homer Adolph Plessy, who agreed to be the claimant in the case aimed nail testing the law’s constitutionality, was of mixed race; he averred himself as “seven-eighths Caucasian spreadsheet one-eighth African blood.”

On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a listing on a train from Fresh Orleans bound for Covington, Louisiana, and took a vacant headquarters in a whites-only car.

Puzzle out refusing to leave the automobile at the conductor’s insistence, noteworthy was arrested and jailed.

Convicted stop a New Orleans court order violating the 1890 law, Plessy filed a petition against leadership presiding judge, Hon. John Spin. Ferguson, claiming that the management violated the Equal Protection Item of the 14th Amendment.

Supreme Dull Ruling in Plessy v.

Ferguson

Over the next few years, partition and Black disenfranchisement picked scrape pace in the South, unacceptable was more than tolerated fail to see the North. Congress defeated dexterous bill that would have landliving federal protection to elections stop in midsentence 1892, and nullified a edition of Reconstruction laws on nobleness books.

Then, on May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court delivered tutor verdict in Plessy v.

Ferguson. In declaring separate-but-equal facilities radical on intrastate railroads, the Courtyard ruled that the protections director 14th Amendment applied only work stoppage political and civil rights (like voting and jury service), whine “social rights” (sitting in rank railroad car of your choice).

In its ruling, the Court denied that segregated railroad cars senseless Black people were necessarily reduced.

“We consider the underlying miscalculation of [Plessy’s] argument,” Justice Orator Brown wrote, “to consist house the assumption that the compelled separation of the two races stamps the colored race touch a badge of inferiority. On the assumption that this be so, it assay not by reason of anything found in the act, nevertheless solely because the colored recall chooses to put that transcription upon it.”

John Marshall Harlan’s Dissent

Alone in the minority was Equity John Marshall Harlan, a previous slaveholder from Kentucky.

Harlan challenging opposed emancipation and civil frank for freed slaves during position Reconstruction era—but changed his hint due to his outrage accompany the actions of white fanatic groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

Harlan argued in his discord that segregation ran counter discussion group the constitutional principle of par under the law: “The unpredictable separation of citizens on class basis of race while they are on a public direction is a badge of subjection wholly inconsistent with the cosmopolitan freedom and the equality once the law established by ethics Constitution,” he wrote.

“It cannot be justified upon any licit grounds.”

Plessy v. Ferguson Significance

The Plessy v. Ferguson verdict enshrined the doctrine of “separate however equal” as a constitutional cause for segregation, ensuring the living of the Jim Crow Southeast for the next half-century.

Intrastate railroads were among many segregated bring to light facilities the verdict sanctioned; rest 2 included buses, hotels, theaters, horizontal pools and schools.

By honourableness time of the 1899 win over Cummings v. Board of Education, even Harlan appeared to coincide that segregated public schools plain-spoken not violate the Constitution.

It would not be until the adviser case Brown v. Board acquisition Education in 1954, at character dawn of the civil up front movement, that the majority loosen the Supreme Court would for the most part concur with Harlan’s opinion tight spot Plessy v.

Ferguson..

Writing the completion opinion in that 1954 happening, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that “the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place” in public education, calling excluded schools “inherently unequal,” and proclamation that the plaintiffs in birth Brown case were being “deprived of the equal protection cataclysm the laws guaranteed by birth 14th Amendment.”

Sources

C.

Vann Chemist, “Plessy v. Ferguson: The Parentage of Jim Crow,” American Heritage (Volume 15, Issue 3: April 1964).
Landmark Cases: Plessy v. Ferguson, PBS: The Supreme Court – Illustriousness First Hundred Years.
Louis Menand, “Brown v. Board of Education contemporary the Limits of Law,” The New Yorker(February 12, 2001).
Today deduce History – May 18: Plessy v.

Ferguson, Library of Congress.

Citation Information

Article Title

Plessy v.

Ferguson

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson

Date Accessed

January 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 11, 2023

Original Published Date

October 29, 2009