Plessy v. Ferguson
(1896)
Focus Question
• What types of segregation and discrimination did
African Americans and other minorities
encounter?
Segregation and Discrimination
• After Reconstruction, southern legislatures passed laws that restricted African
Americans’ rights, but prejudice existed nationwide.
• Some white southerners tried to restrict African Americans’ right to vote by
requiring voters to pay a poll tax and pass a literacy test.
• Southern legislatures passed the Jim Crow Laws to create and enforce
segregation in public places.
• One law requiring separate railway cars for African Americans and whites was
tested by Homer Plessy, an African American. His case went to the Supreme
Court in Plessy v. Ferguson. They upheld segregation, saying “separate but
equal” facilities didn’t violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
• In addition to legalized discrimination, strict rules governed social and
business interactions between black and white Americans.
• The worst outcome of discrimination was lynching, or murder by a mob.
Nearly 900 African Americans were murdered between 1882 and 1892 by
lynch mobs.
Homer Plessy
Plessy v. Ferguson
• June 7, 1892, was jailed for
sitting in the “White” car of
the East Louisiana Railroad.
• He was a Creole of Color
• He was considered black
under Louisiana law
• By Louisiana law, Separate
Car Act of 1892, he was
required to sit in the
“Colored” car.
• A Black civil rights
organization challenged the
law.
• Plessy deliberately sat in the
white section and identified
himself as black
• Lawyers, for Plessy, argued
that the Separate Car Act
violated the 13th and 14th
amendments
• Case went to the Supreme
Court
Opinion of the Court
•In 1896, the Supreme Court held the Louisiana
segregation statue constitutional.
•Speaking for the 7 man majority, Justice Henry
Brown wrote: “A statue which implies merely
legal distinction between the white and colored
races – has no tendency to destroy the legal
equality of the two races… The object of the
14th Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce
the absolute equality of the two races before the
law, but in the nature of things it could not have
been intended to abolish distinctions based upon
color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from
political equality, or a commingling of the two
races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.
Dissenting Opinion
• Justice John Harlan, the lone dissenter, saw
the horrific consequences of the decision.
• “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither
knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In
respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal
before the law… The present decision, it may
well be apprehended, will not only stimulate
aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating,
upon the admitted rights of colored citizens,
but will encourage the belief that it is possible,
by means of state enactments, to defeat the
beneficent purposes which people of the
United States had in view when they adopted
the recent amendments of the Constitution.”
“Separate but Equal” Doctrine
• Set the precedent that
“separate” facilities for blacks
and whites were
constitutional as long as they
were “equal.”
• Covered many areas of public
life, such as restaurants,
theaters, restrooms, and
public schools.
• The doctrine was fiction, as
facilities for blacks were
always inferior to those of
whites.
Discussion Questions
• How did this decision affect segregation laws in
the South?
• How did Plessy v. Ferguson affect African
Americans?