Plessy v. Ferguson

The Color Line

Although mollified by democratic language and reasoning, Plessy can be seen as an antidemocratic reaction to the democratic reforms of Reconstruction during the period from 1865 to 1877. As the nation's first experiment in economic emancipation and interracial democracy, Reconstruction produced three amendments to the U.S. Constitution—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments (in 1865, 1868, and 1870, respectively)—which established (legally but not factually) civil rights for all U.S. residents. But the experiment failed—or, rather, the United States failed the experiment. Reconstruction was progressive, whereas Plessy was regressive. Plessy, in fact, was the ultimate deconstruction of Reconstruction. Far worse were its social and historical consequences. By reconciling White supremacy with the Reconstruction amendments of the 1860s, Plessy was a pact with the devil of Jim Crow, legitimizing the U.S. apartheid of systemic segregation.

The Railroad Line

In September 1891, the local activist Citizens Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law (Comité de Citoyens) decided to challenge the constitutionality of the Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890, which commanded that “all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this State, shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the White, and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations.” Violation of this act triggered a fine of $25 or imprisonment of not more than twenty days.

On June 7, 1892, Homer Adolph Plessy (1863–1925), a shoemaker in his late twenties, bought a first-class ticket at the Press Street Depot in New Orleans for passage on the East Louisiana Railroad to the city of Covington, which was in St. Tammany Parish in Louisiana. His ticket was for a seat in the first-class carriage on a train scheduled to depart at 4:15 PM. The trip was to have taken approximately two hours in its traverse to Covington, which was thirty miles to the north, on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain, near the Mississippi border. Plessy never reached his physical destination because he had a legal destination in mind. A dignified gentleman donning a suit and hat, this “Creole of color” quietly took his seat in a compartment reserved for Whites only. According to a story in the weekly Crusader, “As the train was moving out of the station, the conductor came up and asked if he was a White man. Plessy, who is as White as the average White Southerner, replied that he was a colored man. Then, said the conductor, ‘you must go in the coach reserved for colored people.’” In effect, this scenario was staged; it was planned in advance.

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