PLESSY V. FERGUSON (1896)

BACKGROUND OF THE CASE
Please do NOT mark
on these readings
An 1890 Louisiana law commanded railroads to “provide equal but separate accommodations for the white
and colored races.” Violation of this law carried a fine of $20 or 25 days in jail. Railway personnel were
responsible for assigning seats according to race.
Plessy, who was one-eighth black, attempted to sit in the white section of a train going from New
Orleans to Covington, Louisiana. When a conductor ordered Plessy to give up his seat, he refused. He was
then arrested and ordered imprisoned by Ferguson, a local judge. On appeal, the Louisiana Supreme Court
found that the statute under which Plessy had been arrested was valid.

CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE
Plessy appealed to the United States Supreme Court on the grounds that Louisiana’s statute violated the
Thirteenth Amendment, which forbids slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits the states
from denying “to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

THE COURT’S DECISION
Justice Henry Brown wrote for a seven-member majority, with Justice John Harlan dissenting (one
Justice was absent).
The issue related to the Thirteenth Amendment was quickly brushed aside. The Court held that “a legal
distinction between the white and colored races… has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two
races.”
However, concerned with the Fourteenth Amendment, Brown concluded that it aimed strictly “to enforce
the absolute equality of the two races before the law,” but that it “could not have been intended to abolish
distinctions based on color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality…” Laws requiring
segregation “do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other…,” he stated. Brown called
this “the underlying fallacy” of Plessy’s case and postulated that a black-controlled legislature might
someday enact similar laws, which would also be valid under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Court ruled, then, that the matter ultimately depends on whether Louisiana’s statute was
“reasonable.” The majority opinion explained that segregation laws “have been generally, if not universally,
recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their policy power.” In
such matters, a legislature is free to take into account “established usages, customs, and traditions of the
people,” as well as “the preservation of public peace and good order.”
Finally, Brown rejected the notion that “social prejudices may be overcome by legislation.” He maintained,
“If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or
politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put
them on the same plane.”

A DISSENTING OPINION
Justice Harlan’s dissent first criticized the majority opinion for ignoring the true intent of Louisiana’s
statute, which was “under the guise of giving equal accommodation for whites and blacks, to compel the
latter to keep to themselves while traveling in railroad passenger coaches.” Harlan’s “fundamental
objection” to the statute was that it “interferes with the personal freedoms of citizens.” No government
should be able to infringe the right of one race to choose to travel with another.
Harlan saw segregation on racial lines as “a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom
and equality before the law established by the Constitution… The thin disguise of ‘equal’ accommodations
for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done.”
BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS (1954)

BACKGROUND OF THE CASE
Brown represents a collection of cases, all decided together. The cases had one common feature: Black
children had been denied admission to segregated white public schools.
These cases reached the U.S. Supreme Court by way of appeals through lower courts, all of which had
ruled in accordance with the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). The Plessy case determined that
separate but equal facilities did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of
the laws.”
An earlier case, Sweatt v. Painter (1950) had held that blacks must be admitted to the previously
segregated University of Texas Law School because no separate but equal facility existed in the state. In
Brown, however, there were findings “that the Negro and white schools involved have been equalized or
were being equalized…”

CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE
The Brown case was an explicit reappraisal of the question in Plessy v. Ferguson. Did separate but equal
facilities violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

THE COURT’S DECISION
The Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the Court’s unanimous decision.
Justice Warren began by noting that attempts to determine the precise intent of the Fourteenth
Amendment’s original sponsors have proved inconclusive. Even more difficult was any effort to discover its
relation to the issue of public schools, as so few were in existence when the Amendment took effect.
Warren explained that the Court’s method of examination, then, was to “look to the effect of
segregation itself on public education” in order to determine “if segregation in public schools deprives
these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws.”
Warren quoted a Kansas state court ruling, which held that “segregation with the sanction of law,
therefore, has a tendency to retard the educational and mental development of Negro children and to
deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system.” Likewise,
the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that segregation of black school children “generates a feeling of
inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever
to be undone… Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.”
On this basis the Court concluded, “that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but
equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore we hold that the
plaintiffs… are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws
guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Questions: For each court case, complete the following:
1. List the name of the court case
2. Discuss the origins (background) of the case
3. What was the constitutional issue?
4. Explain the significance of the court’s decision
5. After reading both cases, compare (similarities) & contrast (differences) of the two cases.