What Is Plessy v. Ferguson?

The May 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case is one of the landmark rulings in the history of American jurisprudence. It was the culminating legal action of the post-Reconstruction period in American race relations, and made a firm statement that the Federal government was not in the business of protecting African-Americans. It opened the door to the era of virtual apartheid in the United States that lasted until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

History

The Plessy vs. Ferguson decision finds its roots in the end of the Civil War. During the period called Reconstruction, the defeated Confederate states were administered as Federal territories under military rule. During this time, certain civil rights were available to African-Americans, guaranteed by Federal rule and backed by military force. However, the widespread withdrawal of troops in 1877 opened the way for the South's old political elites to reassert themselves, resulting in the widespread passage of discriminatory laws collectively known as the Jim Crow laws.

The period was characterized by a general rollback of civil-rights protections for freed slaves and even free-born African-Americans. In 1883, the Supreme Court had ruled in the Civil Rights Cases that the 14th Amendment (which guarantees equal protection under the law for all citizens) applied only to government actions and not to private individuals. This lack of protection for private persons against the acts of other private persons largely demolished the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

Features

In 1890, the State of Louisiana passed a law that required separate accommodations for blacks and whites on railroad cars, although it specified that such separate accommodations must be "equal." Concerned citizen groups of both blacks and whites raised the money to test the law in court, getting Homer Plessy to serve as the plaintiff. Plessy, who was 1/8 black, boarded a train in Louisiana in 1892. Under Louisiana's racial laws, his minuscule African-American heritage qualified him as a black man, and he was ordered to leave his whites-only seat. He refused and was arrested and jailed.

The local court and State Supreme Court of Louisiana were unimpressed with Plessy's case and ruled against him. The Plessy case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. In a 7-1 decision, the Court rejected Plessy's 14th Amendment argument, ruling that the Louisiana law in no way violated his rights.

Considerations

The lone dissenter, Justice John Marshall Harlan, wrote a scathing dissent of the Supreme Court's decision. He presciently predicted that the verdict would become as infamous as the Dred Scott decision.

The Court was willfully and unjustly blind in its ruling. Even if a law specifying separate facilities for individuals based upon race was supportable under the Constitution, equal facilities rarely existed in practice even in the 1890s, and would almost never exist thereafter.

Significance

The Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling would become the foundation for the doctrine of Separate-but-Equal treatment. This doctrine was the basis for a regime of legalized segregation, discrimination and virtual apartheid that prevailed across America, but particularly and most virulently in the former slave states until the 1950s and 1960s. It was a loud and clear statement that the Federal government was not in the business of guaranteeing civil rights for minorities, a policy that reached its zenith 14 years later when Woodrow Wilson re-segregated the Federal civil service.

Effects

Often forgotten in this legal drama was the ultimate fate of Homer Plessy himself. He pleaded guilty to the violation and paid the required fine.