Download Street Law Plessey vs. Ferguson Background on the Case: In 1890

Street Law
Plessey vs. Ferguson
Background on the Case:
In 1890, Louisiana passed a statute called the Separate Car Act. This law declared that all rail
companies carrying passengers in Louisiana had to provide separate but equal accommodations
for white and non-white passengers. The penalty for sitting in the wrong compartment was a fine
of $25 or 20 days in jail.
Two parties wanted to challenge the constitutionality of the Separate Car Act. A group of black
citizens who raised money to overturn the law worked together with the East Louisiana Railroad
Company, which sought to terminate the Act largely for monetary reasons. They chose a 30year-old shoemaker named Homer Plessy, a citizen of the United States who was one-eighth
black and a resident of the state of Louisiana. On June 7, 1892, Plessy purchased a first-class
passage from New Orleans to Covington, Louisiana and sat in the railroad car for "White"
passengers. The railroad officials knew Plessy was coming and arrested him for violating the
Separate Car Act. Well known advocate for black rights Albion Tourgee, a white lawyer, agreed
to argue the case for free.
Plessy argued in court that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth
Amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery and the Fourteenth
Amendment requires that the government treat people equally. John Howard Ferguson, the judge
hearing the case, had stated in a previous court decision that the Separate Car Act was
unconstitutional if applied to trains running outside of Louisiana. In this case, however, he
declared that the law was constitutional for trains running within the state and found Plessy
guilty.
Plessy appealed the case to the Louisiana State Supreme Court, which affirmed the decision that
the Louisiana law was constitutional. Plessy then took his case, Plessy v. Ferguson, to the
Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the country. Judge John Howard
Ferguson was named in the case because he had been named in the petition to the Louisiana
State Supreme Court, not because he was a party to the initial lawsuit
How a Dissent can Preview a Future Decision:
Some Supreme Court cases are decided unanimously. However, sometimes the justices do not
agree with the majority decision. These justices often write dissenting opinions that express how
and why they disagree with the majority decision.
Though dissents do not become law as majority opinions do, they are important because they
document the struggle between different interpretations of the law. Sometimes the dissent in one
case becomes the prevailing viewpoint in a future case that overturns an earlier decision. A
dissent presaged a future decision in the Plessy and Brown cases.
In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Justice Harlan disagreed with the majority of his colleagues. The
majority declared that it was possible for segregated facilities to be equal, therefore segregation
did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Harlan wrote a dissent stating that segregation
violated the Fourteenth Amendment because it used the law to sanction inequality among races.
Later, in Brown v. Board of Education I (1954), Chief Justice Earl Warren also declared that
separate facilities violated the Constitution, though he based his argument on slightly different
premises.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Justice Harlan’s Dissent
"Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens...
"The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together, and the interests
of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be
planted under the sanction of law. What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly
create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which, in
fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be
allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens? That, as all will admit, is the real
meaning of such legislation as was enacted in Louisiana."
Background on Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka Kansas:
In Topeka, Kansas in the 1950s, schools were segregated by race. Each day, Linda Brown and
her sister, Terry Lynn, had to walk through a dangerous railroad switchyard to get to the bus stop
for the ride to their all-black elementary school. There was a school closer to the Brown's house,
but it was only for white students.
Topeka was not the only town to experience segregation. Segregation in schools and other public
places was common throughout the South and elsewhere. This segregation based on race was
legal because of a landmark Supreme Court case called Plessy v. Ferguson, which was decided
in 1896. In that case, the Court said that as long as segregated facilities were equal in quality,
segregation did not violate the Constitution.
However, the Browns disagreed. Linda Brown and her family believed that the segregated school
system did violate the Constitution. In particular, they believed that the system violated the
Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing that people will be treated equally under the law.
No State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws.
—Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) helped the Browns.
Thurgood Marshall was the attorney who argued the case for the Browns. He would later become
a Supreme Court justice.
The case was first heard in a federal district court, the lowest court in the federal system. The
federal district court decided that segregation in public education was harmful to black children.
However, the court said that the all-black schools were equal to the all-white schools because the
buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of the teachers were similar;
therefore the segregation was legal.
The Browns, however, believed that even if the facilities were similar, segregated schools could
never be equal to one another. They appealed their case to the Supreme Court of the United
States. The Court combined the Brown's case with other cases from South Carolina, Virginia,
and Delaware. The ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case came in 1954.
Summary of Decision in Brown v Board of Education
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Brown. The Court found the
practice of segregation unconstitutional and refused to apply its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson to
“the field of public education.” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the opinion for the Court.
The Court noted that public education was central to American life. Calling it “the very
foundation of good citizenship,” they acknowledged that public education was not only
necessary to prepare children for their future professions and to enable them to actively
participate in the democratic process, but that it was also “a principal instrument in awakening
the child to cultural values” present in their communities. The justices found it very unlikely that
a child would be able to succeed in life without a good education. Access to such an education
was thus “a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.”
The justices then assessed the equality of the facilities that the Board of Education of Topeka
provided for the education of African American children against those provided for white
children. Ruling that they were substantially equal in “tangible factors” that could be measured
easily, (such as “buildings, curricula, and qualifications and salaries of teachers), they concluded
that the Court must instead examine the more subtle, intangible effect of segregation on the
system of public education.
Departing from the Court’s earlier reasoning in Plessy, the justices here argued that separating
children solely on the basis of race created a feeling of inferiority in the “hearts and minds” of
African American children. Segregating children in public education created and perpetuated the
idea that African American children held a lower status in the community than white children,
even if their separate educational facilities were substantially equal in “tangible” factors. This
feeling of inferiority reduced the desire to learn and achieve in African American children, and
had “a tendency to retard their educational and mental development and to deprive them of some
of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system.” Concluding that
“separate education facilities are inherently unequal”, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation
in public education denied African American children the equal protection of the laws
guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
One year later, the Court addressed the implementation of its decision in a case known as Brown
v. Board of Education II. Chief Justice Warren once again wrote an opinion for the unanimous
court. The Court acknowledged that desegregating public schools would take place in various
ways, depending on the unique problems faced by individual school districts. After charging
local school authorities with the responsibility for solving these problems, the Court instructed
federal trial courts to oversee the process and determine whether local authorities were
desegregating schools in good faith, mandating that desegregation take place with “with all
deliberate speed.”