1896: Plessy v. Ferguson and Institutionalized Segregation

1800-1899: A Divided Nation
Written By Stephanie Brizee

Big Idea

The U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson ruled that racial segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. African American activists initiated the case to tackle the unconstitutionality of Jim Crow laws. The court's decision supported segregation instead of declaring it unconstitutional. African Americans continued fighting against segregation and the broader discrimination they faced across the United States.

What’s important to know?

  1. “Separate but Equal”: In a blow to the effectiveness of the 14th Amendment, the U.S Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that White and Black people could be segregated as long as each race had access to the same things. This further reinforced Jim Crow practices across the States and became a legal precedent enabling further segregation.

  2. Dissent: U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlen of Kentucky strenuously objected to the majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson. He noted that this ruling effectively condoned the impacts of slavery and further solidified its hold over American life.

1: “Separate but Equal”

“Plessy vs. Ferguson, Judgement, Decided May 18, 1896 from Records of the Supreme Court of the United States

Plessy vs. Ferguson

“Decided May 18, 1896; Records of the Supreme Court of the United States; Record Group 267; Plessy v. Ferguson, 163, #15248.”

Image Source: National Archives.

The well-known 1896 Supreme Court case, Plessy v. Ferguson, directly confronted the segregation inherent in Jim Crow policies. The plaintiff, a man who was one-eighth Black, argued that being made to sit in a segregated train car violated his fourteenth amendment rights. This case had been carefully planned by Black activists in the South looking to demonstrate the incompatibility of segregation with the Constitutional amendments passed during Reconstruction.

The Supreme Court interpreted the thirteenth and fourteenths amendment to allow for segregation as long as each race had access to the same types of services. In effect, this decision legalized Jim Crow policies and behaviors that pervaded the South and border states like Missouri.

The Plessy v. Ferguson ruling affirmed the prevailing White attitudes that considered White people as superior to Black people. This decision gave legal standing and cover to the ongoing lynchings and dehumanizing treatment of Black people across the United States. It demonstrated how deeply ingrained beliefs of race, that had started in 1619, remained in the cultural mindset of White America (Kelley, 2010).

“Slavery as an institution tolerated by law would, it is true, have disappeared from our country, but there would remain a power in the States, by sinister legislation, to interfere with the blessings of freedom...”
— Justice John Marshall Harlan in his dissent

2: Dissent

Only one of the Supreme Court justices dissented with this opinion. Justice John Marshall Harlan of Kentucky wrote the following, which aptly summarized the intent of the ruling:

I am of the opinion that the statute of Louisiana is inconsistent with the personal liberties of citizens, white and black, in that State, and hostile to both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution of the United States. If laws of like character should be enacted in the several States of the Union, the effect would be in the highest degree mischievous. Slavery as an institution tolerated by law would, it is true, have disappeared from our country, but there would remain a power in the States, by sinister legislation, to interfere with the blessings of freedom; to regulate civil rights common to all citizens, upon the basis of race; and to place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American citizens, now constituting a part of the political community, called the people of the United States, for whom and by whom, through representatives, our government is administrated. 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. (Oyez.org).

Students

Want to learn more? Plessy v. Ferguson was an incredibly important case. Learn more about the case by watching the video below.

Video from Crash Course Black American History.

Your Turn

What did the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson mean for the lives of Black men and women across the United States? How did the Supreme Court justify their ruling?

Stephanie Brizee
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