He then filed a petition against the judge in that trial, Hon. John H. Ferguson, at the Louisiana Supreme Court, arguing that the segregation law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids states from denying "to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," as well as the Thirteenth Amendment, which banned slavery.
The Court ruled that, while the object of the Fourteenth Amendment was to create "absolute equality of the two races before the law," such equality extended only so far as political and civil rights e. As Justice Henry Brown's opinion put it, "if one race be inferior to the other socially, the constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane. The Court expressly rejected Plessy's arguments that the law stigmatized blacks "with a badge of inferiority," pointing out that both blacks and whites were given equal facilities under the law and were equally punished for violating the law.
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. This case turns upon the constitutionality of an act of the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana, passed in , providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races. By the Fourteenth Amendment, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are made citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside, and the States are forbidden from making or enforcing any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The object of the 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.
Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation in places where they are liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power.
Use our online form to ask a librarian for help. On May 18, , the U. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson ruled that separate-but-equal facilities were constitutional. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision upheld the principle of racial segregation over the next half-century. The ruling provided legal justification for segregation on trains and buses, and in public facilities such as hotels, theaters, and schools. Florida became the first state to mandate segregated railroad cars in , followed in quick succession by Mississippi , Texas , Louisiana and other states by the end of the century.
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. At the heart of the case that became Plessy v. On June 7, , Plessy bought a ticket on a train from New Orleans bound for Covington, Louisiana, and took a vacant seat in a whites-only car.
Convicted by a New Orleans court of violating the law, Plessy filed a petition against the presiding judge, Hon. John H. Ferguson, claiming that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Over the next few years, segregation and Black disenfranchisement picked up pace in the South, and was more than tolerated by the North.
Congress defeated a bill that would have given federal protection to elections in , and nullified a number of Reconstruction laws on the books. Then, on May 18, , the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Plessy v. In its ruling, the Court denied that segregated railroad cars for Black people were necessarily inferior. 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.
Harlan had opposed emancipation and civil rights for freed slaves during the Reconstruction era — but changed his position due to his outrage over the actions of white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
The Plessy v. Intrastate railroads were among many segregated public facilities the verdict sanctioned; others included buses, hotels, theaters, swimming pools and schools. By the time of the case Cummings v. Board of Education , even Harlan appeared to agree that segregated public schools did not violate the Constitution.
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