1896: Plessy v. Ferguson
Big Idea
The Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that racial segregation did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, was brought by African American activists to force the courts to address the injustice of Jim Crow. The deep-seated racist thinking of the court created an outcome that further reinforced Jim Crow segregation rather than ruling it in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Despite this setback, African Americans continued to push back against segregation and the ongoing dehumanization occurring across the United States.
“Separate but Equal”
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.
In an act of rhetorical gymnastics, 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 the racist idea practiced through Jim Crow that pervaded the South and border states like Missouri.
The Plessy v. Ferguson ruling affirmed the prevailing White supremacist attitudes that considered White people as superior to Black people. This decisions gave legal standing and cover to the ongoing torture 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.
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:
“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...”
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.
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 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?
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Read more about the court case here.
Explore more at the National Archives.
Read about Plessy v. Ferguson from the National Constitution Center.
Read about the rulings impact on segregated education for Black students at the National Museum of African and African American History.
Read a New York Times article on Homer Plessy, Rifkin, G. (2020) Overlooked No More: Homer Plessy, Who Sat on a Train, and Stood Up for Civil Rights. New York Times.
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Materials from the National Archives on teaching Plessy v. Ferguson.
Excerpts of the majority opinion and the dissent from Learning for Justice.
Teaching Plessy v. Ferguson from the Zinn Education Project.
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Read about how Plessy v. Ferguson impacted St. Louis in this post from Decoding the City.
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Medley, K.W. (2012) We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson, The Fight Against Segregation. Pelican Publishing.
Powell, J. A. (2021). The Law and Significance of Plessy. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. 7 (1) 20-31; DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2021.7.1.02
Sanders, C. R. (2024) A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs. The University of North Carolina Press.