Homer Plessy Boards East Louisiana Railroad Car – Trip Ends at Supreme Court
Homer Plessy, an African-American, on this day booked a train trip from New Orleans to Covington, LA., with a First Class ticket. When he sat in the “white only” section he was asked to leave, and when he refused he was arrested, removed from the train, and jailed.
His challenge to the racially segregated railroad reached the Supreme Court in the Plessy v. Ferguson case (May 18, 1896). The Court, by an 8–1 vote, ruled against Plessy and upheld the law ordering racially segregated railway cars. The lone dissenter was Justice John Marshall Harlan, who issued a powerful opinion opposing segregation. His dissent was quickly forgotten and remained so for decades, until it was rediscovered and used in cases in the post World War II civil rights movement. Today it is regarded as one of the most important and influential dissents in the history of the court.
Justice Harlan’s grandson and namesake, John Marshall Harlan, II, also became a Supreme Court justice, joining the court on March 17, 1955, where he became a champion of racial justice.
The “separate but equal” doctrine (a phrase that did not appear in Justice Harlan’s famous dissent) was overturned by the Supreme Court in the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision on May 17, 1954, declaring racially segregated schools unconstitutional.
Plessy worked as an insurance agent in New Orleans, and died on March 1, 1925.
The Louisiana law required: “providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations.”
Justice Harlan in Plessy: “. . . In view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.”
Read the new book on the case: Steve Luxenberg, Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation (2019)
Learn more about Homer Plessy.
Learn more: Brook Thomas, Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents (1997)
And more about the case: http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here