His name is Homer Plessy, a 30-year-old shoemaker in New Orleans, and on the afternoon of Tuesday, June 7, 1892, he executes it perfectly by walking up to the Press Street Depot, purchasing a. Plessy v. Ferguson was a court case that took place within the State of Louisiana with regard to the investigation and analysis of racial discrimination suffered by African Americans; this racial discrimination was considered to be prominent within the Southern States.Homer Plessy, who was considered to be 7/8th's of Caucasian descent, boarded a railroad . The Plessy v. Fergusondecision upheld the principle of racial segregation over the next half-century. 36, to have been intended primarily to abolish slavery as it had been previously known in this country, and that it equally forbade Mexican peonage or the Chinese coolie trade when they amounted to slavery or involuntary servitude, and that the use of the word "servitude" was intended to prohibit the use of all forms of involuntary slavery, of whatever class or name. They removed the race line from our governmental systems. That, as all will admit, is the real meaning of such legislation as was enacted in Louisiana. It was intimated, however, in that case that this amendment was regarded by the statesmen of that day as insufficient to protect the colored race from certain laws which had been enacted in the Southern States, imposing upon the colored race onerous disabilities and burdens and curtailing their rights in the pursuit of life, liberty and property to such an extent that their freedom was of little value; and that the Fourteenth Amendment was devised to meet this exigency. The decision in Plessy v. Ferguson continued to permit public segregation under the guise of separate but equal. It ultimately set back civil rights in the United States and resulted in many businesses defining themselves as serving whites only. Plessy v. Ferguson was eventually overturned in 1954. It was adjudged in that case that the descendants of Africans who were imported into this country and sold as slaves were not included nor intended to be included under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and could not claim any of the rights and privileges which that instrument provided for and secured to citizens of the United States; that, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, they were "considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. The reply to all this is that every exercise of the police power must be reasonable, and extend only to such laws as are enacted in good faith for the promotion for the public good, and not for the annoyance or oppression of a particular class. Mr. Sedgwick correctly states the rule when he says that, the legislative intention being clearly ascertained, "the courts have no other duty to perform than to execute the legislative will, without any regard to their views as to the wisdom or justice of the particular enactment. not discriminate against either race, but prescribes a rule applicable alike to white and colored citizens. Plessy was arrested for violating the Separate Car Act and argued in court that the act violated the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. Penalties are prescribed for the refusal or neglect of the officers, directors, conductors and employees of railroad companies to comply with the provisions of the act. 666, 676: "Though the corporation [a railroad company] was private, its work was public, as much so as if it were to be constructed by the State." If a white man and a black man choose to occupy the same public conveyance on a public highway, it is their right to do so, and no government, proceeding alone on grounds of race, can prevent it without infringing the personal liberty of each. But these are questions to be determined under the laws of each State, and are not properly put in issue in this case. This was a petition for writs of prohibition and certiorari originally filed in the supreme court of the state by Plessy, the plaintiff in error, against the Hon. When the Separate Car Act first passed, they boycott first, says Mack. The Plessy v. Ferguson verdict enshrined the doctrine of separate but equal as a constitutional justification for segregation, ensuring the survival of the Jim Crow South for the next half-century. There will later be boycotts of segregated facilities and against segregation laws, all through the 20th century, culminating in the Montgomery bus boycott, when they came to national prominence. At the present term, referring to the previous adjudications, this court declared that, "underlying all of those decisions is the principle that the Constitution of the United States, in its present form, forbids, so far as civil and political rights are concerned, discrimination by the General Government or the States against any citizen because of his race. Sixty millions of whites are in no danger from the presence here of eight millions of blacks. In Missouri ex rel. The legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson 130 years later June 08, 2022 | By BRITTANY HUNTER On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, a 30-year-old shoemaker from New Orleans, walked up to the Press Street Depot ticket counter and bought a first-class seat on the 4:15 p.m. train. But it seems that we have yet, in some of the States, a dominant race -- a superior class of citizens, which assumes to regulate the enjoyment of civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race. (This was somewhat true regarding railway cars, but it was much less true in other types of segregated facilities.). Cambridge, MA 02138, 2022 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, International Legal Studies & Opportunities, Syllabi, Exam and Course Evaluation Archive, Consumer Information (ABA Required Disclosures). 1585 Massachusetts Ave. is unreasonable, or more obnoxious to the Fourteenth Amendment than the acts of Congress requiring separate schools for colored children in the District of Columbia, the constitutionality of which does not seem to have been questioned, or the corresponding acts of state legislatures. race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them." It served as a controlling judicial precedent until it was overturned by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). All citizens are equal before the law." Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court Thats important because the Supreme Court put its imprimatur on the proposition that housing segregation was unconstitutional and unenforceable, and that the courts couldnt wrap themselves up in discrimination. The Comite des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) was a group of New Orleans residents from a variety of ethnic backgrounds that sought to repeal this law. The case stemmed from an 1892. ", "that the officers of such passenger trains shall have power and are hereby required, So, too, in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 109 U. S. 24, it was said that the act of a mere individual, the owner of an inn, a public conveyance or place of amusement, refusing accommodations to colored people cannot be justly regarded as imposing any badge of slavery or servitude upon the applicant, but. Mr. Sedgwick correctly states the rule when he says that, the legislative intention being clearly ascertained, "the courts have no other duty to perform than to execute the legislative will, without any regard to their views as to the wisdom or justice of the particular enactment." of separate schools for children of different ages, sexes and colors, and that they might also establish special schools for poor and neglected children, who have become too old to attend the primary school and yet have not acquired the rudiments of learning to enable them to enter the ordinary schools. But he objecting, and ought never to cease objecting, to the proposition that citizens of the white and black race can be adjudged criminals because they sit, or claim the right to sit, in the same public coach on a public highway. And in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), the Court declared that racially restrictive [housing] covenants were unenforceable, says Mack. New Orleans, and there held to answer a charge made by such officer to the effect that he was guilty of having criminally violated an act of the General Assembly of the State, approved July 10, 1890, in such case made and provided. Browndidnt end separate but equal, and of course, separate never was equal. Upon the filing of this petition, an order was issued upon the respondent to show cause why a writ of prohibition should not issue and be made perpetual, and a further order that the record of the proceedings had in the criminal cause be certified and transmitted to the Supreme Court. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) The state of Louisiana enacted a law that required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In observance of the 120th anniversary of the Plessy vs. Ferguson Decision on May 18, the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation is embarking on an historic initiative to have Homer Plessy posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his significant role in the American Civil Rights Struggle Learn more of the street is as good as the other, or that a house or vehicle of one color is as good as one of another color. The ruling, which became known as "separate but equal," legitimize the Jim Crow laws of the southern states in the early twentieth . Its to keep Black people down, to say to them that theyre inferior, to make it so that white people dont have to associate with Black people, and to do it through the law. Clearly it could not unless taking land for such a purpose by such an agency is taking land for public use. No one would be so wanting in candor a to assert the contrary. Arrested and charged, Plessy petitioned the Louisiana Supreme Court for a writ against Ferguson, the trial court judge, to stop the proceedings against him for criminal violation of the State law. Overview: Louisiana had adopted a law in 1890 that required railroad companies to provide racially segregated accommodations. And so it is in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth and in power. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. If laws of like character should be enacted in the several States of the Union, the effect would be in the highest degree mischievous. What else does this doctrine mean if not that building a railroad, though it be built by a private corporation, is an act done for a public use. Is a state law providing for separate railway cars for African Americans and Caucasians valid without violating the 14th Amendments Equal Protection Clause? Around this time was when the racial segregation laws were placed. 639; People v. King, 18 N.E.Rep. limited economic opportunities for freedmen usually ended up in debt at the end of the year Such a system is inconsistent with the guarantee given by the Constitution to each State of a republican form of government, and may be stricken down by Congressional action, or by the courts in the discharge of their solemn duty to maintain the supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. Of course, he adds, Theoretically, if Missouri had been willing to build a Black law school that was equal to the white law school, then the Court would have found no constitutional violation. Plessy v. Ferguson strengthened racial segregation in public accommodations and services throughout the United States and ensured its continuation for more than half a century by giving it constitutional sanction. Homer Plessy, a 1/8 African American citizen, was considered African American under the legislation. He refused. But when this great principle comes to be applied to the actual and various conditions of persons in society, it will not warrant the assertion that men and women are legally clothed with the same civil and political powers, and that children and adults are legally to have the same functions and be subject to the same treatment, but only that the rights of all, as they are settled and regulated by law, are equally entitled to the paternal consideration and protection of the law for their maintenance and security.". Judge John Howard Ferguson of Louisiana. . 344, 382, said that a common carrier was in the exercise "of a sort of public office, and has public duties to perform, from which he should not be permitted to exonerate himself without the assent of the parties concerned. https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson. If a passenger insists upon going into a coach or compartment not set apart for persons of his race. As historian C. Vann Woodward pointed out in a 1964 article about Plessy v. Ferguson, white and Black Southerners mixed relatively freely until the 1880s, when state legislatures passed the first laws requiring railroads to provide separate cars for Negro or colored passengers. Phoebe Ferguson is a great-great-granddaughter of Judge John Howard Ferguson. Mr. Justice Nelson, speaking for this court in New Jersey Steam Navigation Co. v. Merchants' Bank, 6 How. ", It was, consequently, adjudged that a state law that excluded citizens of the colored race from juries, because of their race and however well qualified in other respects to discharge the duties of jurymen, was repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. He proceeded to board a "Whites Only" car, which at the time was illegal for a person of Black descent. Mack says the Comit employed tactics that would be echoed by later civil rights activists, using a three-pronged strategy that included direct action, publicity campaigns, and litigation. Indeed, the right of a colored man that, in the selection of jurors to pass upon his life, liberty and property, there shall be no exclusion of his race and no discrimination against them because of color has been asserted in a number of cases. Plessy was not, says Mack, the origin of separate but equal. Instead, it was merely the Supreme Courts validation of the concept the final capitulation of the federal government in the creation of Jim Crow, he says. 428. Plessy v. Ferguson Modified date: October 13, 2020 Plessy v. Ferguson is one of the most important Supreme Court cases, in which the Court held that racial segregation is constitutional under the "Separate but Equal" Doctrine. 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. After refusing to leave the car at the conductors insistence, he was arrested and jailed. The Majlessi Law Firm's article (n.d.) entitled "Historic Trial - Plessy V. Ferguson" states that Plessy's attempt to travel on an East Louisiana train in a "whites-only" car - for which he was arrested and put in jail - was on June 7, 1892. ", By the second section, it was enacted "that the officers of such passenger trains shall have power and are hereby required, to assign each passenger to the coach or compartment used for the race to which such passenger belongs; any passenger insisting on going into a coach or compartment to which by race he does not belong shall be liable to a fine of twenty-five dollars, or in lieu thereof to imprisonment for a period of not more than twenty days in the parish prison, and any officer of any railroad insisting on assigning a passenger to a coach or compartment other than the one set aside for the race to which said passenger belongs shall be liable to a fine of twenty-five dollars, or in lieu thereof to imprisonment for a period of not more than twenty days in the parish prison; and should any passenger refuse to occupy the coach or compartment to which he or she is assigned by the officer of such railway, said officer shall have power to refuse to carry such passenger on his train, and for such refusal neither he nor the railway company which he represents shall be liable for damages in any of the courts of this State.". & Const.Constr. The managers of the railroad are not allowed to exercise any discretion in the premises, but are required to assign each passenger to some coach or compartment set apart for the exclusive use of his race. John H. Ferguson, judge of the criminal district court for the parish of Orleans, and setting forth, in substance, the following facts: Statutes must always have a reasonable construction. Plessy was officially dead, in jurisprudence if not in the lived experience of Black Americans. The legislature cannot force desegregation to encourage race equality because it must occur organically. So, in Township of Pine Grove v. Talcott, 19 Wall. So, where the laws of a particular locality or the charter of a particular railway corporation has provided that no person shall be excluded from the cars on account of. He bought a first-class ticket and boarded the whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad in a train for Covington. Laws forbidding the intermarriage of the two races may be said in a technical sense to interfere with the freedom of contract, and yet have been universally recognized as within the police power of the State. Statutes must always have a reasonable construction. Plessy v. Ferguson was important because it essentially established the constitutionality of racial segregation. Thus, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, it was held by this court that a municipal ordinance of the city of San Francisco to regulate the carrying on of public laundries within the limits of the municipality violated the provisions of the Constitution of the United States if it conferred upon the municipal authorities arbitrary power, at their own will and without regard to discretion, in the legal sense of the term, to give or withhold consent as to persons or places without regard to the competency of the persons applying or the propriety of the places selected for the carrying on of the business. The fundamental objection, therefore, to the statute is that it interferes with the personal freedom of citizens. First that there is a reluctance to overturn legislative acts unless clearly unconstitutional and second that there is a respect for stare decisis ( previ. The case stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for Black people. There were also new pieces of civil rights legislation in the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875, and a commitment on the behalf of white Northerners to at least try to defend interracial democracy in the south and nationally, through congressional legislation and through the presence of Union troops.. Keith Plessy, a cousin of Plessy's three generations removed, and Phoebe Ferguson, the great-great-granddaughter of Ferguson, gathered at the historic site in New Orleans. Introduction Plessy v. Ferguson involved the Separate Car Act enacted in Louisiana in 1890. . Issue. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. But, notwithstanding this, petitioner was required by the conductor, under penalty of ejection from said train and imprisonment, to vacate said coach and occupy another seat in a coach assigned by said company for persons not of the white race, and for no other reason than that petitioner was of the colored race; that, upon petitioner's refusal to comply with such order, he was, with the aid of a police officer, forcibly ejected from said coach and hurried off to and imprisoned in the parish jail of. As plaintiff in the test case the committee chose a person of mixed race in order to support its contention that the law could not be consistently applied, because it failed to define the white and coloured races. To this order the respondent made answer, transmitting a certified copy of the proceedings, asserting the constitutionality of the law, and averring that, instead of pleading or admitting that he belonged to the colored race, the said Plessy declined and refused, either by pleading or otherwise, to admit. ", Much nearer, and, indeed, almost directly in point is the case of the Louisville, New Orleans &c. Railway v. Mississippi, 133 U. S. 587, wherein the railway company was indicted for a violation of a statute of Mississippi enacting that all railroads carrying passengers should provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races by providing two or more passenger cars for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger cars by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations. It is true that the question of the proportion of colored blood necessary to constitute a colored person, as distinguished from a white person, is one upon which there is a difference of opinion in the different States, some holding that any visible admixture of black blood stamps the person as belonging to the colored race (State v. Chaver, 5 Jones [N.C.] 1, p. 11); others that it depends upon the preponderance of blood (Gray v. State, 4 Ohio 354; Monroe v. Collins, 17 Ohio St. 665); and still others that the predominance of white blood must only be in the proportion of three-fourths. As a result, restrictive Jim Crow legislation and separate public accommodations based on race became commonplace. Ex parte Plessy, 45 La. The fourth section is immaterial. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow citizens, our equals before the law. 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