Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

The Case

Challenges to the rise of Jim Crow converged with the test case against the Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890 providing for the “equal but separate accommodations for the White and colored races” on passenger railways within the state and barring persons from occupying railcars other than those to which their race was assigned. The challenge came from the New Orleans Creole and Black organization, the Citizens' Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law. The challenge from New Orleans was no coincidence, given its history of a less severe racial environment and a significant population of educated Creoles and free Blacks. By the 1890s, New Orleans was one of the last bastions of organized African American resistance to Jim Crow in the South.

On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, classified as colored because he was one-eighth African (octoroon), purchased a first-class interstate ticket in Louisiana from New Orleans to Covington in an attempt to test the Separate Car Act. After he was shown to his seat in the White section, Plessy, who appeared to be White, informed the conductor of his racial background as an octoroon. Plessy was instructed to move to the “colored car,” but he refused and was arrested and taken to the parish jail. Plessy attempted to halt the trial, arguing that the statute was unconstitutional under both the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. After his arguments were rejected in Louisiana, Plessy sought review by the Supreme Court, which did not hear his case until 1896.

By a seven-to-one vote, the Supreme Court rejected Plessy's arguments and sustained the Louisiana law. Writing for the Court, Justice Henry Billings Brown rejected the claim that segregation was in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary forms of servitude, in that a “colored car” did not seek to reintroduce slavery itself. Brown also argued that the Car Act did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to guarantee “the absolute equality of the races before the law,” it did not require social equality or racial mingling, according to Brown.

The Court saw no evidence that segregation “stamp[ed] the colored race with a badge of inferiority” or created racial inequality. In effect, the Court saw no benefit of “race mingling” and assumed that no laws could overcome social prejudices (racism) and bring about racial equality. The Court also based its Fourteenth Amendment interpretation on a precedent set by segregated schooling of Black children. Specifically, Justice Brown cited the ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in Roberts v. City of Boston (1849) upholding segregated schooling of African American [Page 1666]children. Although Massachusetts outlawed segregated schooling in 1855 and repealed the law, Justice Brown argued in line with Massachusetts Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw's ruling in the Roberts case that “this prejudice [racism], if it exists, is not created by law and [probably] cannot be changed by law.” In short, the Court made “separate but equal” constitutional in all public facilities, from trains to restrooms to schools.

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