Homer Plessy's Arrest in 1892 Led to a Landmark Ruling. Now He May Get Biography Ferguson was born the third and last child to Baptist parents (John H. Ferguson & Sarah Davis Luce) on June 10, 1838 in Chilmark, Massachusetts. Ninety-nine hundredths of the business opportunities are in the control of white people Indeed, is it [reputation] not the most valuable sort of property, being the master-key that unlocks the golden door of opportunity?, Im sure theres little suspense around the fact that a majority of the Supreme Courts then-serving justices chose against opening the door to the Plessy teams arguments. Plessy v. Ferguson Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine. Foundation Board Members include: Raynard Sanders, Ph.D, John Howard Ferguson IV, Alexander Pierre Tureaud, Jr., Katharine Ferguson Roberts, Jackson Knowles, Phoebe Chase Ferguson, Keith M. Plessy, Brenda Billips Square, Keith Weldon Medley, Ron Bechet, Stephen Plessy, Judy Bajoie, and Neferteri Plessy. 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. The court rendered its decision one month later, on May 18. But, by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Plessy v. Ferguson - 64 Parishes [6] Despite its infamy, the decision has never been explicitly overruled. After refusing to move to a car for African Americans, he was arrested and charged with violating the Separate Car Act. Florida became the first state to mandate segregated railroad cars in 1887, followed in quick succession by Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana and other states by the end of the century. 163 U. S. 537. C-SPAN Landmark Cases | Season Two - Home Updates? Plessy then took his case, Plessy v. Ferguson, to the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the country. The truth is that no one involved inPlessyknew they were on a longer march toBrown,or that their case would become one of the most recognizable in history, or that the sentence that the Supreme Court handed down would take up less than a sentence really, just three words in the American mind. It showed that they still thought of Black men and women as being less and not deserving the same rights as the White men. Articles with the HISTORY.com Editors byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan, Matt Mullen and Christian Zapata. Contractors of America v. Jacksonville, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. There is no caste here. Plessy, "American courts . The legacy of Plessy v.Ferguson. Homer Plessy Vs. Fergusen: Supreme Court Case 548 Words3 Pages Plessy v Fergusen was yet another court case where "separate but equal" was not implementing equality. In it . May 18, 1896. [39] The doctrine had been strengthened also by an 1875 Supreme Court decision that limited the federal government's ability to intervene in state affairs, guaranteeing to Congress only the power "to restrain states from acts of racial discrimination and segregation". HIGHLIGHTS [55], In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public education was unconstitutional. On June 7, 1892, a racially mixed shoemaker from New Orleans named Homer Plessy bought a first-class ticket for a train bound for Covington, La., and took a seat in . Ferguson was born on June 10, 1838 in Chilmark/Tisbury, Massachusetts. Plessy v. Ferguson at 125 - Harvard Law School Plessy v. Ferguson established the constitutionality of laws mandating separate but equalpublic accommodations for African Americans and whites. Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter from the Court's decision, writing that the U.S. Constitution "is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens", and so the law's distinguishing of passengers' races should have been found unconstitutional. Plessy v. Ferguson was the first major inquiry into the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendments (1868) equal-protection clause, which prohibits the states from denying equal protection of the laws to any person within their jurisdictions. 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case on racial segregation, "Plessy" redirects here. Judge John Howard Ferguson was named in the case No one would be so wanting in candor as to assert the contrary. Heres what happens next on the train: If a few passengers fail to notice the dispute the first or second time Plessy refuses to move, no one can avoid the confrontation when the engineer abruptly halts the train so that Dowling can dart back to the depot and return with Detective Christopher Cain. No One Can Stop Talking About Justice John Marshall Harlan [citation needed], From 1890 to 1908, state legislatures in the South disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites through rejecting them for voter registration and voting: making voter registration more difficult by providing more detailed records, such as proof of land ownership or literacy tests administered by white staff at poll stations. The Plessy & Ferguson Foundation states that the 1892 arrest of Homer Plessy was part of an organized effort by the Citizens Committee to challenge Louisiana's Separate Car Act. They filed their appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 5, 1893. Even the East Louisiana Railroad, conductor Dowling and Detective Cain are in on the scheme. In 1892, on a steamy spring day in New Orleans, Louisiana, a man a . [51]:1618 The principles of Plessy v. Ferguson were affirmed in Lum v. Rice (1927), which upheld the right of a Mississippi public school for white children to exclude a Chinese American girl. "[22] The law itself was repealed five years later, but the precedent stood. [27], Next, the Court considered whether the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which reads: "nor shall any State deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." [4][5] Notably the court ruled the existence of laws based upon race was not inherently racial discrimination. [34] Plessy changed his plea to "guilty" of violating the Separate Car Act, which carried a $25 fine or 20 days in jail. [9] The law required passenger train officers to "assign each passenger to the coach or compartment used for the race to which such passenger belongs". TheCivil Rights Casesopened the floodgates for Jim Crow segregation, with transportation leading the way, and not just on ferry lines. Historian Rogers Smith noted on the subject that "lawmakers frequently admitted, indeed boasted, that such measures as complex registration rules, literacy and property tests, poll taxes, white primaries, and grandfather clauses were designed to produce an electorate confined to a white race that declared itself supreme", notably rejecting the 14th and 15th Amendments to the American Constitution. Of course discerning minds like Tourge saw through such theories, but, as Lofgren illustrates in a table summarizing a 1960 study by historian of anthropology George W. Stocking Jr., among 50 social scientists publishing journal articles in the years leading up toPlessy, 94 percent believed in the existence of a racial hierarchy and in differences between the mental traits (intelligence, temperament, etc.) The Court rejected Plessy's lawyers' arguments that the Louisiana law inherently implied that black people were inferior, and gave great deference to American state legislatures' inherent power to make laws regulating health, safety, and moralsthe "police power"and to determine the reasonableness of the laws they passed. At the same time, for the sake of argument, Brown wrote, even if ones color was critical to his reputation (and thus constituted a property right), he and the Court were unable to see how [the Louisiana] statute deprives him of, or in any way affects his right to, such property. (Perhaps this was because attorneys for the state had already conceded that the law, as written, could be interpreted as having a crack in its immunity shield for erring rail lines and conductors.). The case of Plessy vs. Ferguson was one of a combination of rulings passed by the U.S. and state Supreme Courts after Reconstruction. 1, Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney, Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan. Louisiana Plessy v Ferguson upheld segregation - now Plessy's family seeks a pardon 125 years after the landmark ruling, Plessy and Ferguson descendants and the New Orleans district. Clarence Thomas called affirmative action 'critical' before comparing On November 18, 1892, Judge John Howard Ferguson ruled against Plessy. Supreme Court 163 U.S. 537 16 S.Ct. Some cases in this period attempted to curtail the In Plessy v.Ferguson the Court infamously ruled it was within constitutional boundaries for the state of Louisiana to enforce racial segregation in public facilities. The house still stands today and is designated a historical landmark of the 1989 Orleans Parish Landmarks Commission. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. [51]:6, The separate facilities and institutions accorded to the African-American community were consistently inferior[53] to those provided to the White community. [8] The Library of Congress regards Plessy as not having been expressly overruled until Bob Jones University v. United States.[2][3]. The law required that all railroads operating in the state provide equal but separate accommodations for white and African American passengers and prohibited passengers from entering accommodations other than those to which they had been assigned on the basis of their race. In 1891 a group of Creole professionals in New Orleans formed the Citizens Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law. On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessya mixed-race shoemakerwas arrested for sitting in a whites-only East Louisiana Railroad car and violating the state's . 210. Ferguson denied the request, and the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld Ferguson's ruling on appeal. 2 Act 111, 1890 of theLouisiana Separate Car Act, which, after requiring all railway companies [to] provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races in Sec. Plessyv. By endorsing the notorious. This contradicted the vague declaration of "separate but equal" issued after the Plessy decision. Such legally enforced segregation in the south would last into the 1960s. Alone in the minority was Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former slaveholder from Kentucky. Plessy V. Ferguson was the 1896 case that ruled racial segregation constitutional, thereby upholding the "equal but separate" doctrine and legalizing Jim Crow. ), Reinforcing their views on race were legislators and judges. Some established de jure segregated educational facilities, separate public institutions such as hotels and restaurants, separate beaches among other public facilities, and restrictions on interracial marriage, but in other cases segregation in the North was related to unstated practices and operated on a de facto basis, although not by law, among numerous other facets of daily life. Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co. Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill, Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education, Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, United States v. Montgomery County Board of Education, Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education. The Massachusetts Supreme Court had ruled in 1849before the 14th amendmentthat segregated schools were constitutional. I allude to the Chinese race. A Massachusetts native, Louisiana judge John Howard Ferguson presided over Homer Adolph Plessy's trial for violating the Louisiana law prohibited integrated rail travel in the state. of races. (Ill let you guess which race almost always came out on top. Plessy appealed the case to the Louisiana State Supreme Court, which affirmed the decision that the Louisiana law was constitutional. [27] It held that as long as a law that classified and separated people by their race was a reasonable and good faith exercise of a state's police power and was not designed to oppress a particular class, the law did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. Read all 100 Facts onThe Root. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. Omissions? In its ruling, the Court denied that segregated railroad cars for Black people were necessarily inferior. Plessy v. Ferguson No. Ferguson Appellant's Claim: That Louisiana's law requiring blacks to ride in separate railroad cars violated Plessy's right to equal protection under the law Chief Defense Lawyer: M.J. Cunningham [35] The Comit des Citoyens disbanded shortly after the trial's end. This website is no longer actively maintained, Some material and features may be unavailable, Major corporate support for The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross is provided by, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross is a film by. John H. Ferguson, judge of the criminal district court for the parish of Orleans, and setting forth, in substance, the following facts: He opted to pay the fine. His decision was upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court. Plessy v. Ferguson - Plessy v. Ferguson: Legal Equality | Britannica At Plessys trial in U.S. District Court, Judge John H. Ferguson dismissed his contention that the act was unconstitutional. The group was dedicated to repealing the Separate Car Act and fighting its implementation. Plessy v. Ferguson 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 exception allowed black women who were nannies to white children to be in the white-only train cars. A group of prominent black, creole of color, and white creole New Orleans residents formed a civil rights group called the Comit des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens). As weve seen in the past two weeks, everything about Jim Crow art and law was meant to turn the spectrum of race into easily identifiable stereotypes. With Jim Crow still ascendant betweenPlessyandBrown,babies born in New Orleans like future jazz great Louis Armstrong (1901) would have to grow up in the shadows of the color line thatPlessys lawyers were unable to erase or even blur. If you think about some of the most important leaders in African-American history, W.E.B. Plessy v. Ferguson: 1896 - Court, Separate, Blacks, and - JRank O'Gorman & Young, Inc. v. Hartford Fire Insurance Co. Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth, City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. At the same time, as my colleague at Harvard legal historian Ken Mackhas pointed outin the Yale Law Journal, we err in seeingPlessythrough the prism of the case that undid separate-but-equal a half-century later,Brown v. Board of Education(1954),so that the struggle becomesonlyone of securing civil rights in an integrated society instead of through multiple and sometimes contradictory paths: equality, independence, racial uplift, to name a few. [13] Plessy was remanded for trial in Orleans Parish. In his opinion for the Court, handed down on May 18, 1896, Justice Henry Billings Brown explained that, as a technical matter, he didnt have to address Homer Plessys particular mixture of colored blood, because the appeal his lawyers had filed challenged only the constitutionality of Louisianas Separate Car Act, not how it had been applied to the actual sorting of Plessy or any other man. When Plessy resists moving to the Jim Crow car once more, the detective has him removed, by force, and booked at the Fifth Precinct on Elysian Fields Avenue. In 1954, in Brown vs. Board of Education, the Court overturned Plessy, . (May 2021) John Howard Ferguson (June 10, 1838 - November 12, 1915) was an American lawyer and judge from Louisiana, most famous as the defendant in the Plessy v. Ferguson case. Plessy v. Ferguson was important because it essentially established the constitutionality of racial segregation. Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About the American Civil Rights Movement, 26 Decade-Defining Events in U.S. History, https://www.britannica.com/event/Plessy-v-Ferguson-1896, National Archives - Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Harvard Law School - Plessy v. Ferguson at 125, PBS LearningMedia - A Calculated Act - The African Americans, Cornell University Law School - Legal Information Institute - Plessy v. Ferguson, Plessy v. Ferguson - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). Supreme Court rules "separate but equal" constitutional in Plessy v It served as a controlling judicial precedent until it was overturned by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). Making the Louisiana law even more absurd, in Harlans view, had been the sole exception the statute had carved out for nurses attending children of the other race. In other words, it was OK for black Mammies to ride white cars with white babies, but not with their own (or with white adults, for that matter), because in those instances alone, the unspoken racial hierarchy was clear: Black nurses, at least as a matter of perception, still bore the markings of slaves. The court's conservatives used a case literally based on a homophobe's fantasies to blow a huge hole in our antidiscrimination laws and revive the spirit of Plessy v. Ferguson. Plessy then appealed the case to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which affirmed the decision that the Louisiana law was constitutional. The Court rejected the notion that the law marked black Americans with "a badge of inferiority", and said that racial prejudice could not be overcome by legislation.[27]. Find educational resources related to this program - and access to thousands of curriculum-targeted digital resources for the classroom at PBS LearningMedia. In 1896, the Supreme Court issued one of the most shameful decisions in US history, Plessy vs. Ferguson. The case stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for Black people. Brewer took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. For most,Plessy v. Fergusononly acquired its notoriety years later as a result of theBrownschool desegregation cases and of future lawyers like Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall, who found inspiration for their strides against Jim Crow segregation inPlessys lone dissent by Justice John Marshall Harlan of all the justices a Southerner and a former slave holder. Congress defeated a bill that would have given federal protection to elections in 1892, and nullified a number of Reconstruction laws on the books. Florida followed suit in 1887; Mississippi in 1888; Texas in 1889; Plessys Louisiana in 1890; Arkansas, Tennessee (again) and Georgia in 1891; and Kentucky in 1892. Images Plessy's Arrest: The Daily Picayune published notice on June 9, 1892 regarding Homer Plessy's arrest for violating Louisiana's Separate Car Act.Courtesy of The Times-Picayune. The Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, announced 125 years ago Tuesday, is duly remembered as one of the great abominations in legal history. Plessy vs. Ferguson: Separate Isn't Equal - Other Jim Crow Information Why was Plessy v. Ferguson important? Contrary to popular memory, The gist of our case, they wrote in their brief (as quoted in Lofgren), is the unconstitutionality of the [Separate Cars Acts] assortment;notthe question of equal accommodation. In other words, if train conductors could be authorized to classify men and women by race, according to visible and, in Plessys case, invisible cues, where would the line-drawing stop?