Plessy v. Ferguson
From Judgepedia
Brown v. Board of Education (1954) was the decision rescinded.
Much like Rosa Parks, the case, to the casual observer, regarded "appropriate" seating on public transportation. However, on a much larger and grander scale, it was a matter of racial justice.
The case began four years prior to the Court's ruling when a shoemaker named Homer Plessy (1862-1925) was jailed for occupying a "white" seat on an East Louisiana train. Plessy, part of an effort by the Citizens' Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law (instigated by the Louisiana Separate Car Act) refused to remove from said "white" section of the train, since under Louisiana law, Plessy was considered of colored-descent, even though he was 7/8 white. "After successfully leading a test case in which the Louisiana district court declared forced segregation in railroad cars traveling between states to be unconstitutional, the committee was anxious to test the constitutionality of segregation on railroad cars operating solely within a single state. The committees (sic) strategy was to have someone with mixed blood violate the law..."[1] Structuring the test as such would allow the committee's lawyer (Albion Tourgée) to test the arbitrariness of the law. When the case was taken to court, the Louisiana judiciary ruled that it was within states' rights to determine when--and if--to displace, detain, or arrest peoples of colored-heritage when riding on intrastate transportation.
The case was appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1893, and when again rejected, was brought before the Supreme Court in 1896.
The Case Approaches the Supreme Court
With plenty of time to sharpen his briefs, Tourgée argued that Plessy had been denied his Fourteenth Amendment rights--i.e. equal protection rights. Additionally, he argued that the law, by also violating the Thirteenth Amendment, perpetuated slavery. [2]
The Decision
The Majority Decision was written by Associate Justice Henry Billings Brown, and stated that the law did not violate either Amendment. The lone dissenting Justice was John Marshall Harlan, who wrote: "...every one knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons."
Implications
Legalized segregation would continue for over 50 years after Plessy received his verdict.
References
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