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Posted on 09/19/2014 11:44:35 AM PDT by Sam Gamgee
On this day in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Louisiana law mandating “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races” on railroad trains. The ruling upheld racial segregation on the federal level for the first time.
In its 7-1 decision, the high tribunal struck a major blow against racial integration. Known as Plessy v. Ferguson, the ruling stood until 1954.
Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote a scathing dissent: “Our Constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.”
In 1892, Homer Plessy had boarded a car of the East Louisiana Railroad that was reserved for whites. Although Plessy was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black, he was required to travel in a “colored” car.
When Plessy refused to move, he was arrested and jailed. He argued that the railroad had denied him his rights under the 13th and 14th amendments of the Constitution. But the judge, John Howard Ferguson, ruled that Louisiana had the sole right to regulate railroad companies operating within state boundaries.
After the high court upheld Ferguson, the New Orleans Comité des Citoyens, which had arranged Plessy’s demonstration and brought the lawsuit, said, “We, as freemen, still believe that we were right and our cause is sacred.”
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Great point.
Actually legally Plessy has never been overturned. In Brown v Board the court ruled separate schools are inherently not equal but did not overturn Plessy. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made separate illegal overturning state laws.
Weird.
Never really read the particulars about plesssy v ferguson.
How would they know he was 1/8 anything?
. . Troublemaker. ...
Wikipedia has a good entry on this. The whole arrest was a setup to give Plessy standing to sue in Federal court against the LA law mandating segregation:
In 1890, the state of Louisiana passed a law (the Separate Car Act) that required separate accommodations for blacks and whites on railroads, including separate railway cars.[3] Concerned, a group of prominent black, creole, and white New Orleans residents formed the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) dedicated to repeal the law.[4] They eventually persuaded Homer Plessy, a man of mixed race, to participate in an orchestrated test case. Plessy was born a free man and was an “octoroon” (of seven-eighths European descent and one-eighth African descent). However, under Louisiana law, he was classified as black, and thus required to sit in the “colored” car.[5]
On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket at the Press Street Depot and boarded a “whites only” car of the East Louisiana Railroad in New Orleans, Louisiana, bound for Covington, Louisiana.[6] The railroad company, which opposed the law on the grounds that it would require the purchase of more railcars, had been previously informed of Plessy’s racial lineage, and the intent to challenge the law.[7] Additionally, the committee hired a private detective with arrest powers to detain Plessy, to ensure he was charged for violating the Separate Car Act, as opposed to a vagrancy or some other offense.[7] After Plessy took a seat in the whites-only railway car, he was asked to vacate it, and sit instead in the blacks-only car. Plessy refused and was arrested immediately by the detective.[8] As planned, the train was stopped, and Plessy was taken off the train at Press and Royal streets.[7] Plessy was remanded for trial in Orleans Parish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson
The irony is that if Mr. Plessy were alive today, he’d be too white to qualify for affirmative action.
While I agree with the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in principle, the problem is that the only race-based right that the states have amended the Constitution to expressly protect is voting rights as evidenced by the 15th Amendment. In other words, the Supremes wrongly legislated segregation rights from the bench imo.
Will somebody please remind me why the Founding States drafted the Constitution?
You believe in principle in legally-enforced racial segregation?
the problem is that the only race-based right that the states have amended the Constitution to expressly protect is voting rights as evidenced by the 15th Amendment.
You are ignoring the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
The Constitution contains the 3/5 slave compromise.
Re: “Will somebody please remind me why the Founding States drafted the Constitution?”
Most of them were under the impression it carefully listed all the powers of the federal government and retained all other rights for citizens and states.
And, slightly off topic...
Anyone here watching the Roosevelt special on PBS?
When Teddy ran for president in 1912 as the Progressive Party candidate, he campaigned as a judicial activist with the same radical agenda as Woodrow Wilson.
Re: “You believe in principle in legally-enforced racial segregation?”
As I understand it, Louisiana argued that the Constitution granted each state the power to regulate commerce within its boundaries.
The legal principle at issue was not segregation, but state power versus federal power.
I am open to instruction if my understanding is not correct.
Surely that power is not unlimited. Could California say that no one could drive a car in the state unless it had a pro-Obama bumpersticker on it?
You can go back to the Scott v. Sanford decision of 1856, if not before, for examples where the Court ignored that principle, which isn't in the Constitution to begin with.
"While I agree with the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in principle, the problem is that the only race-based right that the states have amended the Constitution to expressly protect is voting rights as evidenced by the 15th Amendment. In other words, the Supremes wrongly legislated segregation rights from the bench imo."
Mea culpa. Thank you for checking me on my statement. I did get the wires crossed (predictable, annoying Friday distractions here, more distractions to come), so please allow me to restate what I put.
I don't agree with segregation.
HOWEVER ...
Since the states have never amended the Constitution to expressly prohibit segregation, the Court couldn't do anything but allow segregation.
So the Court did not legislate segregation from the bench as I had ranted in my previous post.
Also, I think that the lawmakers who drafted 14A should have seen segregation coming and put some "speed bumps" in the Constitution, perhaps an extra provision in 14A, to discourage segregation.
"You are ignoring the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment."
I'm not concerned about today's PC interpretations of the EPC, activist judges wrongly using the EPC as a wild card to legislate new rights from the bench.
In fact, not only did John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment (14A), clarify that 14A applied only those personal protections which the states have amended to the Constitution to the states, but the Supreme Court of that same period had essetially agreed with Bingham about 14A as evidenced by the following excerpts.
“Mr. Speaker, this House may safely follow the example of the makers of the Constitution and the builders of the Republic, by passing laws for enforcing all the privileges and immunities of the United States as guaranteed by the amended Constitution and expressly enumerated in the Constitution [emphasis added].” — Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 42nd Congress, 1st Session. (See lower half of third column.)
“3. The right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that amendment does not add to these privileges and immunities. It simply furnishes additional guaranty for the protection of such as the citizen already had [emphasis added].” —Minor v. Happersett, 1874.
So since 14A applies only rights expressly amended to the Constitution by the states to the states, prohibiting or limiting segregation requires express constitutional language, imo. Such things shouldn't be established by activist judges subjectively reading anything that they want to into the EPC.
Agree, up to a point.
Unless Plessy could show that actual harm was being done to Black citizens by this policy, then I'm not sure what argument he could make against the regulation.
I mean, legal segregation is a fact of human life, in America, and everywhere else.
We segregate school facilities by age and gender.
We segregate prisons by race, by sexual preference, by gender, and by violent and non-violent offenders.
Indian Reservations, which are sanctioned by federal law, openly segregate on the basis of race.
1/8 Black means one great-grandparent was Black, the rest non-Black.
Unless you’re a strict Constitutionalist you would, but if you’re not then the default is the prevailing view of the society at that point in time.
Take a look and essentially that’s how the Court’s majority rules. Without a firm anchor in the Constitution, it’s all drift.
I guess I just find it stunning that about half the nation continued to find ways to suppress other members of society - blacks and creoles. How do we square that and forgive ourselves for that?
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