Plessy v. Ferguson

In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the best known of early segregation cases, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths White and one-eighth Black, for attempting to sit in a public railway car reserved for Whites. In its analysis, the Court decided that distinctions based on race did not violate the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. By accepting the notion that “separate but equal” facilities met the requirements of the Constitution, the Court laid a firm legal basis for subsequent segregation, although the actual phrase “separate but equal” cannot be found in the Court's opinion. Plessy served as the foundation for sustaining the principle of racial segregation for over 50 years in maintaining that separate accommodations-including schools-did not deprive Blacks of equal rights if the accommodations were equal.

Leading up to Plessy were the civil rights cases of 1883, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited state governments from discriminating against individuals due solely to their race but did not restrict private organizations or individuals from doing so. As a result of the Court's holdings, privately owned railroads, hotels, theaters, and similar enterprises could legally practice segregation. In Plessy, the Court also validated state legislation that specifically discriminated against Blacks, in this case, a state law from Louisiana that required separate seating arrangements for the races on railroad cars.

Not long after Plessy, in Cumming v. Board of Education of Richmond County (1899), the Court went even further by refusing to strike down a state law from Georgia that permitted local school boards to establish separate schools for White children even though officials failed to provide comparable schools for Black students. The Court expressly extended the notion of separate but equal in education in Gong hum v. Rice (1927), a case from Mississippi wherein it permitted officials to exclude a student of Chinese ancestry from a school for White children.

For several decades, a de jure segregated system of schools existed in the South resulting from Plessy and its progeny. At the same time, in seeking to comply with the “equal protection” requirement, several states allegedly created “separate but financially equal” education systems, also known as dual systems, one for Whites and another for Blacks. These policies barred minority students from attending the White schools.

Justice John M. Harlan wrote the dissenting opinion for Plessy in words that would be remarkably prophetic of early victories in the 1950s civil rights movements. Justice Harlan protested that states could not impose criminal penalties on citizens simply because they wished to use the public highways and common carriers. Harlan's pleas that the Constitution is color-blind fell on deaf ears. Ultimately, a series of suits that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed in the 1950s successfully attacked the injustice of segregated schools, culminating in the Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954).

In Brown, the plaintiffs raised the issue of whether separation of children for public education created a suspect class of individuals, arguing that separate was inherently unequal. In Brown the Court agreed with the plaintiffs, thus for the first time identifying race as a suspect class and outlawing all governmental actions that had the impact of treating individuals differently according to their race.

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