World v. Us

   A Friday welcome from Joe McDonnell

   On this day in 1896, the Supreme Court handed down their decision in the Plessy v. Furguson case, 7-1 in favor of Furguson. Court cases are kown by the names of the plaintiff (Plessy) and the defendant (Ferguson). These Supreme Court decisions have played a large part in shaping our country for good or ill. I have little idea what earlier decisions like Marbury v. Madison or McCulloch v. Maryland were about, though a visit to the internet would put that right.
   Other decisions like Roe v. Wade or Bush v. Gore are more familiar. We learn to live with these decisions, but some, such as Dred Scott v. Sandford literally tear the country apart. The Dred Scott decision (1857) basically said blacks could never be citizens of the United States. It is considered the Court's worst decision ever. The second worst was Plessy v. Ferguson, which established the "separate but equal" doctrine for African-Americans, also known as the  Jim Crow regime.
   Homer Plessy was a New Orleans shoemaker who attempted to sit in a whites only railroad car. He  was arrested when he refused to move. He was one-eighth African American which made him an octoroon. He looked white, but according to Louisiana law, he was black.
   After the Civil War and two new amendments to the Constitution,  blacks could marry whoever they wanted, sit in any railroad car, and vote. In 1877 the Federal troops who had been enforcing these new laws were withdrawn from the South. Since then Southern racists had been seeking to reestablish their dominance.
   In 1890 Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act which required separate rail cars for blacks and whites. A New Orleans civil rights committee decided to challenge the law by having Plessy break it. Plessy, who was a member of the committee,  was an ideal choice because he was white enough to buy a first class ticket and black enough to be arrested for doing so. The committee even hired a private detective to make the arrest to be sure Plessy was not arrested on some other charge. The committee informed the railroad of their plan which made the railroad happy because they didn't want to have to buy more railway cars to accommodate blacks passengers.
   On June 7, Plessy boarded the train in New Orleans. The detective asked him to move to the car for blacks. Plessy refused, was arrested and held in jail on $500 bail, which the committee paid. Judge Ferguson found Plessy guilty and levied a $25 fine. The committee appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court which upheld Ferguson. The committee appealed to the Supreme Court and, after four years, the case was heard.
   Judge Ferguson was once more upheld. The majority opinion said, "The object of the Fourteenth Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things, it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social...equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either."
   The results of this decision would prove most unsatisfactory to blacks. The "equal"accommodations provided for blacks would also be unsatisfactory. Southern states were now free to pass laws that would effectively take away the right to vote from poor whites as well as blacks. As blacks moved north to escape discrimination, northern states established policies to keep black separate from whites.
   Plessy v. Ferguson was not overtuned till 1954 by the Brown v. Board of Education  which declared the "separate but equal" doctrine unconstitutional. It took another 10 years of protest until the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act got things back to where they stood when Homer Plessy boarded that train in New Orleans in 1890.

There are no known photos of Plessy, but this will give you an idea.