States which had successfully integrated elements of their society abruptly adopted oppressive legislation that erased reconstruction era efforts.

[14], In his case, Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Louisiana, Plessy's lawyers argued that the state law which required East Louisiana Railroad to segregate trains had denied him his rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution,[15] which provided for equal treatment under the law.
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guaranteed "equal protection" under the law to all people. of Okla. Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No.

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.

[14]

After the Compromise of 1877 led to the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, Democrats consolidated control of state legislatures throughout the region, effectively marking the end of Reconstruction.Southern blacks saw the promise of equality under the law embodied by the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment to the Constitution receding quickly, and a return to disenfranchisement and other disadvantages, as white supremacy reasserted itself across the South.A… The Court concluded that although the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to guarantee legal equality of all races in America, it was not intended to prevent social or other types of discrimination.[21]. In 1946, H.M. Sweatt , a black man, worked as a Texas postal worker. [26], In an eloquent and now well-known passage, Harlan argued that even if many white Americans of the late 19th century considered themselves socially superior to Americans of other races, the U.S. Constitution was "color-blind", and could not permit any classes among citizens in matters of civil rights.[27]. But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens.

French and American smugglers competed for navigation rights on the Ohio River. 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. The Supreme Court's ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) established the "separate but equal" doctrine, which provided a legal justification for racial segregation in the ensuing decades. [3][4] The decision legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877).

Plessy v. Ferguson, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court, on May 18, 1896, by a seven-to-one majority (one justice did not participate), advanced the controversial “ separate but equal” doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws. Board of Education- Ended the era of "separate but equal" schools Fair Housing Act- allowed the government to initiate legal actions in cases of housing discrimination Fourteenth Amendment- guaranteed equal protection under the law Tittle VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - outlawed job discrimination based on gender.

African-American community leaders, who had achieved brief political success during the Reconstruction era and even into the 1880s, lost gains made when their voters were excluded from the political system.

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. 3. He applied to the University of Texas Law School, however, the school denied his application based solely on his race.

However, under Louisiana law, he was classified as black, and thus required to sit in the "colored" car.

[12] 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.

[46], From 1890 to 1908, state legislatures in the South disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites through rejecting them for voter registration and voting: making voter registration more difficult by providing more detailed records, such as proof of land ownership or literacy tests administered by white staff at poll stations. [43] 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. Separate but equal definition, pertaining to a racial policy, formerly practiced in some parts of the United States, by which Black people could be segregated if granted equal opportunities and facilities, as for education, transportation, or jobs. Plessy's lawyers had argued that segregation laws inherently implied that black people were inferior, and therefore stigmatized them with a second-class status that violated the Equal Protection Clause. Plessy refused and was arrested immediately by the detective. [38] Both point to a passage of Harlan's Plessy dissent as particularly troubling:[39][40], 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.

Court membership Chief Justice Melville [48] Plessy v. Ferguson was never explicitly overruled by the Supreme Court, but is effectively dead as a precedent.

Plessy was convicted and sentenced to pay a $25 fine. On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy agreed to be arrested for refusing to move from a seat reserved for whites. [32] The ruling basically granted states legislative immunity when dealing with questions of race, guaranteeing the states' right to implement racially separate institutions, requiring them only to be "equal".

2.

I allude to the Chinese race. 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.[47].

He lost at trial, and his conviction was affirmed on his appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Further, they argued that the newly created school did not enjoy a status equal to those of the existing law schools within the state. See more.

[10], On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket at the Press Street Depot and boarded a "Whites Only" car of the East Louisiana Railroad in New Orleans, Louisiana, bound for Covington, Louisiana. 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. This contradicted the vague declaration of "separate but equal" institutions issued after the Plessy decision. Brewer did not participate in the case because he had left Washington just before oral arguments to attend to the sudden death of his daughter. 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.
"[32] Harlan's concerns about the encroachment on the 14th Amendment would prove well-founded; states proceeded to institute segregation-based laws that became known as the Jim Crow system. Tourgée argued that the reputation of being a black man was "property", which, by the law, implied the inferiority of African Americans as compared to whites. 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. [12][2] Justice David J.

[9] They persuaded Homer Plessy, a man of mixed race, to participate in an orchestrated test case.

Plessy v. Ferguson was a Supreme Court decision that upheld the separate but equal doctrine.

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. Some commentators, such as Gabriel J. Chin[36] and Eric Maltz,[37] have viewed Harlan's Plessy dissent in a more critical light, and suggested it be viewed in context with his other decisions.

[12] In speaking for the court's decision that Ferguson's judgment did not violate the 14th Amendment, Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Charles Erasmus Fenner cited a number of precedents, including two key cases from Northern states. One was signed by Albion W. Tourgée and James C. Walker and the other by Samuel F. Phillips and his legal partner F. D. McKenney. Harlan's prediction that the decision would eventually become as infamous as the Court's decision in the 1857 case Dred Scott v. Sandford—in which the Court ruled that black Americans could not be citizens under the U.S. Constitution, and that its legal protections and privileges could never apply to them—proved to be correct. [36] 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. [6] However, a series of subsequent decisions beginning with the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education—which held that the "separate but equal" doctrine is unconstitutional in the context of public schools and educational facilities—have severely weakened Plessy to the point that it is considered to have been de facto overruled. Upon being charged for boarding a "whites only" train car, Plessy's lawyers defended him by arguing that the law was unconstitutional. [19] The state legal brief was prepared by Attorney General Milton Joseph Cunningham of Natchitoches and New Orleans. [28], Plessy legitimized state laws establishing racial segregation in the South and provided an impetus for further segregation laws.

Tourgée and Phillips appeared in the courtroom to speak on behalf of Plessy. [21] According to the Court, the question in any case of racial segregation laws like Plessy was whether the law was reasonable, and the Court gave great discretion to State legislatures to determine the reasonableness of the laws they passed.[21].

1, National Coalition for Men v. Selective Service System, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plessy_v._Ferguson&oldid=981193245, African-American history between emancipation and the civil rights movement, History of racial segregation in the United States, Passenger rail transportation in Louisiana, United States Supreme Court cases of the Fuller Court, Overruled United States Supreme Court decisions, Wikipedia pending changes protected pages, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, The "separate but equal" provision of private services mandated by state government is constitutional under the, Brown, joined by Fuller, Field, Gray, Shiras, White, Peckham. As evidence of this willful ignorance, Harlan pointed out that the Louisiana law contained an exception for "nurses attending children of the other race" – this allowed black women who were nannies to white children to be in the whites-only cars. This case … [31] The doctrine had been strengthened also by an 1875 Supreme Court decision that limited the federal government's ability to intervene in state affairs, guaranteeing to Congress only the power "to restrain states from acts of racial discrimination and segregation".