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Plessy v. Ferguson
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 13, 1896 Decided May 18, 1896
Full case name	Homer A. Plessy v. John H. Ferguson
Citations	163 U.S. 537 (more)16 S. Ct. 1138; 41 L. Ed. 256; 1896 U.S. LEXIS 3390
Decision	Opinion
Case history
Prior	Ex parte Plessy, 11 So. 948 (La. 1892)
Subsequent	None
Holding
The "separate but equal" provision of private services mandated by state law is constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause.
Court membership
Chief Justice Melville Fuller Associate Justices Stephen J. Field · John M. Harlan Horace Gray · David J. Brewer Henry B. Brown · George Shiras Jr. Edward D. White · Rufus W. Peckham
Case opinions
Majority	Brown, joined by Fuller, Field, Gray, Shiras, White, Peckham
Dissent	Harlan
Brewer took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. XIII, XIV; 1890 La. Acts No. 111, p. 152, § 1
Overruled by
(de facto) Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and subsequent rulings

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for African-Americans were equal in quality to those of white people, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". The decision legitimized the many state "Jim Crow laws" re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877. Such legally enforced segregation in the South lasted into the 1960s.

The underlying case began in 1892 when Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man, deliberately boarded a whites-only train car in New Orleans. By boarding the whites-only car, Plessy violated Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890, which required "equal, but separate" railroad accommodations for white and black passengers. Plessy was charged under the Act, and at his trial his lawyers argued that judge John Howard Ferguson should dismiss the charges on the grounds that the Act was unconstitutional. Ferguson denied the request, and the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld Ferguson's ruling on appeal. Plessy then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In May 1896, the Supreme Court issued a 7–1 decision against Plessy, ruling that the Louisiana law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and stating that although the Fourteenth Amendment established the legal equality of whites and blacks, it did not and could not require the elimination of all "distinctions based upon color". The Court rejected Plessy's lawyers' arguments that the Louisiana law inherently implied that black people were inferior, and gave great deference to American state legislatures' inherent power to make laws regulating health, safety, and morals—the "police power"—and to determine the reasonableness of the laws they passed. Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter from the Court's decision, writing that the U.S. Constitution "is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens", and so the laws distinguishing races should have been found unconstitutional.

Plessy is widely regarded as one of the worst decisions in U.S. Supreme Court history. Despite its infamy, the decision has never been explicitly overruled. However, beginning in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education, which held that the "separate but equal" doctrine is unconstitutional in the context of public schools, a series of the Court's later decisions have severely weakened Plessy to the point that it is considered to have been de facto overruled.

Background

Legal background and incident

In 1890, the Louisiana State Legislature passed a law called the Separate Car Act, which required separate accommodations for blacks and whites on Louisiana railroads. The law required passenger train officers to "assign each passenger to the coach or compartment used for the race to which such passenger belongs". It also made it a misdemeanor for any passenger to "insist on going into a coach or compartment to which by race he does not belong," punishable by either a $25 fine or up to 20 days in prison.

A group of prominent black, creole of color, and white creole New Orleans residents formed a civil rights group called the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens). The group was dedicated to repealing the Separate Car Act and fighting its implementation. The Comité eventually persuaded Homer Plessy, a man of mixed race who was an "octoroon" (person of seven-eighths white and one-eighth black ancestry), to participate in an orchestrated test case to challenge the Act. Plessy had been born a free man and was fair-skinned. However, under Louisiana law, he was classified as black, and thus required to sit in the "colored" car.

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. The railroad company, which had 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. Additionally, the Comité des Citoyens hired a private detective with arrest powers to detain Plessy, to ensure that he would be charged for violating the Separate Car Act, as opposed to vagrancy or some other offense. 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. As planned, the train was stopped, and Plessy was taken off the train at Press and Royal streets. Plessy was remanded for trial in Orleans Parish.

Trial

Plessy petitioned the state district criminal court to throw out the case, State v. Homer Adolph Plessy, on the grounds that the state law requiring East Louisiana Railroad to segregate trains had denied him his rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution, which provided for equal treatment under the law. However, the judge presiding over his case, John Howard Ferguson, ruled that Louisiana had the right to regulate railroad companies while they operated within state boundaries. Four days later, Plessy petitioned the Louisiana Supreme Court for a writ of prohibition to stop his criminal trial.

State appeal

The Louisiana Supreme Court issued a temporary writ of prohibition while it reviewed Plessy's case. In December 1892, the court upheld Judge Ferguson's ruling, and denied Plessy's attorneys' subsequent request for a rehearing. In speaking for the court's decision that Ferguson's judgment did not violate the 14th Amendment, Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Charles Erasmus Fenner cited a number of precedents, including two key cases from Northern states. The Massachusetts Supreme Court had ruled in 1849—before the 14th amendment—that segregated schools were constitutional. In answering the charge that segregation perpetuated race prejudice, the Massachusetts court famously stated: "This prejudice, if it exists, is not created by law, and probably cannot be changed by law." The law itself was repealed five years later, but the precedent stood.

In a Pennsylvania law mandating separate railcars for different races the Pennsylvania Supreme Court stated: "To assert separateness is not to declare inferiority ... It is simply to say that following the order of Divine Providence, human authority ought not to compel these widely separated races to intermix."

Supreme Court appeal

Undaunted, the Committee appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Two legal briefs were submitted on Plessy's behalf. One was signed by Albion W. Tourgée and James C. Walker and the other by Samuel F. Phillips and his legal partner F. D. McKenney. Oral arguments were held before the Supreme Court on April 13, 1896. Tourgée and Phillips appeared in the courtroom to speak on behalf of Plessy. Tourgée built his case upon violation of Plessy's rights under the 13th Amendment, prohibiting slavery, and the 14th Amendment, which states "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Tourgée argued that the reputation of being a black man was "property", which, by the law, implied the inferiority of African Americans as compared to whites. The state legal brief was prepared by Attorney General Milton Joseph Cunningham of Natchitoches and New Orleans. Cunningham was a staunch supporter of white supremacy, who according to a laudatory 1916 obituary "worked so effectively in restoring white supremacy in politics that he finally was arrested, with fifty-one other men of that community, and tried by federal officials."

Decision

On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court issued a 7–1 decision against Plessy that upheld the constitutionality of Louisiana's train car segregation laws.

Opinion of the Court

Seven justices formed the Court's majority and joined an opinion written by justice Henry Billings Brown. The Court first dismissed any claim that the Louisiana law violated the Thirteenth Amendment, which, in the majority's opinion, did no more than ensure that black Americans had the basic level of legal equality needed to abolish slavery.

Next, the Court considered whether the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which reads: "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The Court said that although the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to guarantee the legal equality of all races in the United States, it was not intended to prevent social or other types of discrimination.

The object of the 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, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.

— Plessy, 163 U.S. at 543–44.

The Court reasoned that laws requiring racial separation were within Louisiana's police power: the core sovereign authority of U.S. states to pass laws on matters of "health, safety, and morals". It held that as long as a law that classified and separated people by their race was a reasonable and good faith exercise of a state's police power and was not designed to oppress a particular class, the law did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. According to the Court, the question in any case that involved a racial segregation law was whether the law was reasonable, and the Court gave State legislatures broad discretion to determine the reasonableness of the laws they passed.

Plessy's lawyers had argued that segregation laws inherently implied that black people were inferior, and therefore stigmatized them with a second-class status that violated the Equal Protection Clause. But the Court rejected this argument.

We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction on it.

— Plessy, 163 U.S. at 551.

The Court rejected the notion that the law marked black Americans with "a badge of inferiority", and said that racial prejudice could not be overcome by legislation.

Harlan's dissent

Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter from the Court's decision. Harlan strongly disagreed with the Court's conclusion that the Louisiana railcar law did not imply that black people were inferior, and he accused the majority of being willfully ignorant on the issue.

Every one knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white people from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons. ... The thing to accomplish was, under the guise of giving equal accommodation for whites and blacks, to compel the latter to keep to themselves while traveling in railroad passenger coaches. No one would be so wanting in candor as to assert the contrary.

— Plessy, 163 U.S. at 557 (Harlan, J., dissenting).

To support his argument, Harlan pointed out that the Louisiana law contained an exception for "nurses attending children of the other race". This exception allowed black women who were nannies to white children to be in the white-only train cars. Harlan said that this showed that the Louisiana law allowed black people to be in white-only cars only if it was obvious that they were "social subordinates" or "domestics".

In a now-famous passage, Harlan forcefully argued that even though many white Americans of the late 19th century considered themselves superior to those of other races, the U.S. Constitution was "color-blind" regarding the law and civil rights.

The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth and in power. ... But 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. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.

— Plessy, 163 U.S. at 559 (Harlan, J., dissenting).

Harlan predicted the Court's decision would eventually become as infamous as its 1857 decision Dred Scott v. Sandford, in which the Court had ruled that black Americans could not be citizens under the U.S. Constitution and that its legal protections and privileges could never apply to them.

Aftermath

After the Supreme Court ruling, Plessy's criminal trial went ahead in Ferguson's court in Louisiana on February 11, 1897. Plessy changed his plea to "guilty" of violating the Separate Car Act, which carried a $25 fine or 20 days in jail. He opted to pay the fine. The Comité des Citoyens disbanded shortly after the trial's end.

Significance

Plessy legitimized state laws establishing "racial" segregation in the South and provided an impetus for further segregation laws. It also legitimized laws in the North requiring "racial" segregation, such as in the Boston school segregation case noted by Justice Brown in his majority opinion. Legislative achievements won during the Reconstruction Era were erased through means of the "separate but equal" doctrine. The doctrine had been strengthened also by an 1875 Supreme Court decision that limited the federal government's ability to intervene in state affairs, guaranteeing to Congress only the power "to restrain states from acts of racial discrimination and segregation". The ruling basically granted states legislative immunity when dealing with questions of "race", guaranteeing the states' right to implement racially separate institutions, requiring them only to be equal.

Despite the pretense of "separate but equal", non-whites essentially always received inferior facilities and treatment, if they received them at all.

The prospect of greater state influence in matters of race worried numerous advocates of civil equality, including Supreme Court Justice John Harlan, who wrote in his Plessy dissent, "we shall enter upon an era of constitutional law, when the rights of freedom and American citizenship cannot receive from the nation that efficient protection which heretofore was unhesitatingly accorded to slavery and the rights of the master." Harlan's concerns about the encroachment on the 14th Amendment would prove well-founded; states proceeded to institute segregation-based laws that became known as the Jim Crow system. In addition, from 1890 to 1908, Southern states passed new or amended constitutions including provisions that effectively disenfranchised blacks and thousands of poor whites.

Some commentators, such as Gabriel J. Chin and Eric Maltz, have viewed Harlan's Plessy dissent in a more critical light, and suggested it be viewed in context with his other decisions. Maltz has argued that "modern commentators have often overstated Harlan's distaste for race-based classifications", pointing to other aspects of decisions in which Harlan was involved. Both point to a passage of Harlan's Plessy dissent as particularly troubling:

There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race. But, by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union ... and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race.

New Orleans historian Keith Weldon Medley, author of We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson, The Fight Against Legal Segregation, said the words in Justice Harlan's "Great Dissent" were taken from papers filed with the court by "The Citizen's Committee".

The effect of the Plessy ruling was immediate; there were already significant differences in funding for the segregated school system, which continued into the 20th century; states consistently underfunded black schools, providing them with substandard buildings, textbooks, and supplies. States which had successfully integrated elements of their society abruptly adopted oppressive legislation that erased reconstruction era efforts. The principles of Plessy v. Ferguson were affirmed in Lum v. Rice (1927), which upheld the right of a Mississippi public school for white children to exclude a Chinese American girl. Despite the laws enforcing compulsory education, and the lack of public schools for Chinese children in Lum's area, the Supreme Court ruled that she had the choice to attend a private school. Jim Crow laws and practices spread northward in response to a second wave of African-American migration from the South to northern and midwestern cities. Some established de jure segregated educational facilities, separate public institutions such as hotels and restaurants, separate beaches among other public facilities, and restrictions on interracial marriage, but in other cases segregation in the North was related to unstated practices and operated on a de facto basis, although not by law, among numerous other facets of daily life.

The separate facilities and institutions accorded to the African-American community were consistently inferior to those provided to the White community. This contradicted the vague declaration of "separate but equal" issued after the Plessy decision. Since no state wrote the "separate but equal" doctrine into a statute, there was no remedy, other than going back to the U.S. Supreme Court, if the separate facilities were not equal, and states faced no consequences if they underfunded services and facilities for non-whites.

From 1890 to 1908, state legislatures in the South disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites through rejecting them for voter registration and voting: making voter registration more difficult by providing more detailed records, such as proof of land ownership or literacy tests administered by white staff at poll stations. African-American community leaders, who had achieved brief political success during the Reconstruction era and even into the 1880s, lost gains made when their voters were excluded from the political system. Historian Rogers Smith noted on the subject that "lawmakers frequently admitted, indeed boasted, that such measures as complex registration rules, literacy and property tests, poll taxes, white primaries, and grandfather clauses were designed to produce an electorate confined to a white race that declared itself supreme", notably rejecting the 14th and 15th Amendments to the American Constitution.

In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public education was unconstitutional. While Plessy v. Ferguson was never explicitly overruled by the Supreme Court, it is effectively dead as a precedent; the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled that segregation on interstate transport violated the Interstate Commerce Act in the 1955 case Keys v. Carolina Coach Co. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited legal segregation and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided for federal oversight and enforcement of voter registration and voting.

Plessy and Ferguson Foundation

In 2009, Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson, descendants of participants on both sides of the 1896 Supreme Court case, announced the establishment of the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation for Education and Reconciliation. The foundation would work to create new ways to teach the history of civil rights through film, art, and public programs designed to create understanding of this historic case and its effect on the American conscience.

In 2009, a marker was placed at the corner of Press and Royal streets in New Orleans, where Plessy had been removed from his train.

Pardon

In 2021, the Louisiana Board of Pardons unanimously approved a posthumous pardon of Plessy, sending it to Governor John Bel Edwards for final approval. Edwards granted the pardon on January 5, 2022.

See also

• Anticanon
• List of United States court cases involving the Fourteenth Amendment
• Loving v. Virginia
• United States constitutional law

References

Footnotes

1. Due to the sudden death of his daughter, justice David J. Brewer left Washington shortly before oral arguments and did not participate in the decision.

Citations

1. Schauer (1997), p. 280.
2. Packard, Jerrold M. (July 21, 2003). American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow. St. Martin's Publishing Group. pp. Preface Page 4. ISBN 0-312-30241-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
3. Nowak & Rotunda (2012), § 18.8(c).
4. Groves, Harry E. (1951). "Separate but Equal—The Doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson". Phylon. 12 (1): 66–72. doi:10.2307/272323. JSTOR 272323.
5. McBride, Alex (2023). "Separate Car Act". Accordingly, in 1890, Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which required "separate railway carriages for the hite and colored races." The act required that all passenger railways provide separate cars for Blacks and Whites, stipulated that the cars be "equal" in facilities, banned Whites from sitting in Black cars and Blacks in White cars (with exception to "nurses attending children of the other race"), and penalized passengers or railway employees for violating its terms.
6. Amar (2011), p. 76; Epstein (1995), p. 99.
7. Lofgren (1987), pp. 204–05.
8. Schauer (1997), pp. 279–80.
9. "Plessy v. Ferguson". Encyclopedia of American Studies. 2010. Retrieved December 22, 2012.
10. Medley, Keith Weldon (2003). We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson: The Fight Against Legal Segregation (PDF). Pelican Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1-58980-120-2. Archived from the original on March 4, 2009. Retrieved May 1, 2010.
11. Koffi N, Maglo (Summer 2010). "GENOMICS AND THE CONUNDRUM OF RACE: some epistemic and ethical considerations". Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. 53 (3). ProQuest 733078852.
12. "Plessy v. Ferguson (No. 210)". Legal Information Institute. Retrieved October 4, 2011.
13. ^ Reckdahl, Katy (February 11, 2009). "Plessy and Ferguson unveil plaque today marking their ancestors' actions". The Times-Picayune.
14. "Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)". PBS. Retrieved October 5, 2011.
15. ^ Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
16. "Plessy v. Ferguson: Litigation". Law Library of Louisiana. May 19, 2021. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
17. ^ Maidment, Richard A. (August 1973). "Plessy v. Ferguson Re-Examined". Journal of American Studies. 7 (2): 125–132. doi:10.1017/S0021875800013396. JSTOR 27553046. S2CID 145390453.
18. Lofgren (1987), pp. 42.
19. Elliott (2006), p. 270.
20. Lofgren (1987), p. 43.
21. Gates, Henry Louis. "'Plessy v. Ferguson': Who Was Plessy?". PBS. Retrieved October 27, 2021.
22. Sarah C. Roberts v. City of Boston, 59 Massachusetts 198, 5 Cush. 198 (Massachusetts S.J.C. 1848).
23. ^ Tischauser, Leslie V. (2012). Jim Crow laws. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-313-38609-1.
24. H. W. Brands (2010). American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism 1865–1900. New York: Random House. pp. 463–464.
25. Gordon, Milton M. (January 3, 1954). "Enforcing Racial Segregation; It Is Viewed as Violating the Rights of All Americans". The New York Times.
26. "Milton Joseph Cunningham, Obituary". Times Picayune. October 20, 1916., cited in Mimi Methvin McManus (May 29, 2003). "Milton Joseph Cunningham". genealogy.com. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved October 2, 2014.
27. ^ Nowak & Rotunda (2012), § 14.8, p. 818.
28. Quoted in Nowak & Rotunda (2012), § 14.8, p. 818.
29. Chemerinsky (2019), § 9.3.1, p. 760.
30. ^ Chemerinsky (2019), § 9.3.1, p. 761.
31. Quoted in Chemerinsky (2019), § 9.3.1, p. 761.
32. ^ Quoted in part in Chemerinsky (2019), § 9.3.1, p. 761.
33. ^ Amar (2011), p. 85.
34. Lofgren (1987), p. 208.
35. Fireside 2004, p. 229
36. Elliott 2006, p. 294
37. Lee, Russell (July 1939). "Negro drinking at "Colored" water cooler in streetcar terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma". Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. Library of Congress Home. Retrieved March 23, 2005.
38. Brands, H. W. (2010). American Colossus. New York: Anchor Books. p. 466.
39. Sutherland, Arthur E. Jr. (July 1954). "Segregation and the Supreme Court". The Atlantic Monthly.
40. ^ Oldfield, John (January 2004). "State politics, railroads, and Civil Rights in South Carolina, 1883–89". American Nineteenth Century History. 5 (2): 71–91. doi:10.1080/1466465042000257864. S2CID 144234514.
41. "Separate But Equal: The Law of the Land". Smithsonian National Museum of American History Behring Center.
42. McCutheon, John (1905). The Mysterious Stranger and Other Cartoons. McClure, Phillips & Co.
43. Krock, Arthur (June 6, 1950). "In The Nation; An Historic Day in the Supreme Court". The New York Times.
44. ^ Chin 1996.
45. Maltz, Eric (1996). "Only Partially Color-Blind: John Marshall Harlan's View of Race and the Constitution". Georgia State L. Rev. 12: 973.
46. Maltz 1996, p. 1015.
47. Chin 1996, p. 156.
48. Maltz 1996, p. 1002.
49. "Plessy v. Ferguson – 163 U.S. 537 (1896) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center". Supreme.justia.com. Retrieved December 22, 2012.
50. "Civil rights pioneer celebrated with marker". February 10, 2009. Archived from the original (Flash) on February 21, 2009.
51. ^ Klarman, Michael J. (2004). From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Oxford University Press. Retrieved February 1, 2010.
52. Nahuja, Aama (2009). "Gong Lum v. Rice". In Lomotey, Kofi (ed.). Encyclopedia of African American Education. Vol. 1. SAGE. p. 291.
53. White, Walter (March 10, 1954). "Decision in Plessy Case". The New York Times.
54. Darden, Gary Helm (2009). "The New Empire in the 'New South': Jim Crow in the Global Frontier of High Imperialism and Decolonization". Southern Quarterly. 46 (3): 8–25. ProQuest 222201716.
55. Mcwilliams, Wilson Carey (1999). "On Rogers Smith's Civic Ideals". Studies in American Political Development. 13 (1): 216–229. doi:10.1017/S0898588X9900200X (inactive December 24, 2024). S2CID 143449197.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of December 2024 (link)
56. "Brown v. Board of Education". cornell.edu.
57. Amar, Akhil Reed (July 6, 2015). "Anthony Kennedy and the Ghost of Earl Warren". slate.com. Slate Magazine. Retrieved July 22, 2015.
58. "A Celebration of Progress: Unveiling the long-awaited historical marker for the arrest site of Homer Plessy". New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Archived from the original on February 21, 2009.
59. Abrams, Eve (February 12, 2009). "Plessy/Ferguson plaque dedicated". Archived from the original on January 29, 2012. Retrieved January 14, 2019.
60. Brockell, Gillian (November 12, 2021). "Louisiana board votes to pardon Homer Plessy of Plessy v. Ferguson". Washington Post.
61. Tina Burnside (January 5, 2022). "Homer Plessy, of Plessy v. Ferguson's 'separate but equal' ruling, pardoned by Louisiana". CNN. Retrieved January 5, 2022.

Works cited

• Aleinikoff, T. Alexander (1992). "Re-Reading Justice Harlan's Dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson: Freedom, Antiracism, and Citizenship". University of Illinois Law Review (4): 961–78.
• Amar, Akhil Reed (2011). "Plessy v. Ferguson and the Anti-Canon". Pepperdine Law Review. 39 (1): 75–90.
• Chemerinsky, Erwin (2014). The Case Against the Supreme Court. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-312800-7.
• Chemerinsky, Erwin (2019). Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies (6th ed.). New York: Wolters Kluwer. ISBN 978-1-4548-9574-9.
• Chin, Gabriel J. (1996). "The Plessy Myth: Justice Harlan and the Chinese Cases". Iowa Law Review. 82: 151–182. doi:10.17077/0021-065X.4551. SSRN 1121505.
• Elliott, Mark (2006). Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-518139-5.
• Epstein, Richard A. (1995). Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-6743-0809-3.
• Fireside, Harvey (2004). Separate and Unequal: Homer Plessy and the Supreme Court Decision That Legalized Racism. New York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 0-7867-1293-7.
• Larson, Edward J. (2011). "Anti-Canonical Considerations". Pepperdine Law Review. 39 (1): 1–12.
• Lofgren, Charles A. (1987). The Plessy Case: A Legal-Historical Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-505684-6.
• Medley, Keith Weldon (2003). We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson. Gretna LA: Pelican. ISBN 1-58980-120-2. Review
• Nowak, John E.; Rotunda, Ronald D. (2012). Treatise on Constitutional Law: Substance and Procedure (5th ed.). Eagan, Minnesota: West Thomson/Reuters. OCLC 798148265.
• Schauer, Frederick (1997). "Generality and Equality". Law and Philosophy. 16 (3): 279–97. doi:10.2307/3504874. JSTOR 3504874.
• Thomas, Brook (1997). Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford Books. ISBN 978-0-312-14997-0.
• Tushnet, Mark (2008). I Dissent: Great Opposing Opinions in Landmark Supreme Court Cases. Boston: Beacon Press. pp. 69–80. ISBN 978-0-8070-0036-6.

External links

• Works related to Plessy v. Ferguson at Wikisource
• Text of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) is available from: Cornell CourtListener Findlaw Google Scholar Justia Library of Congress
• Plessy v. Ferguson from the Library of Congress
• Plessy & Ferguson Foundation
• Plessy v. Ferguson from C-SPAN's Landmark Cases: Historic Supreme Court Decisions
• Newspaper articles and clippings about Plessy v. Ferguson at Newspapers.com
• The Road to 'Separate But Equal' from the National Park Service
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) from the National Archives and Records Administration

v t e Civil rights movement (1954–1968)
Events (timeline)	Prior to 1954 Journey of Reconciliation Executive Order 9981 Murders of Harry and Harriette Moore Sweatt v. Painter (1950) McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950) Baton Rouge bus boycott 1954–1959 Brown v. Board of Education Bolling v. Sharpe Briggs v. Elliott Davis v. Prince Edward County Gebhart v. Belton Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company Emmett Till Montgomery bus boycott Browder v. Gayle Tallahassee bus boycott Mansfield school desegregation 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom "Give Us the Ballot" Royal Ice Cream sit-in Little Rock Nine Cooper v. Aaron Civil Rights Act of 1957 Ministers' Manifesto Katz Drug Store sit-in Kissing Case Biloxi wade-ins 1960–1963 New Year's Day March Sit-in movement Greensboro sit-ins Nashville sit-ins Sibley Commission Atlanta sit-ins Savannah Protest Movement Greenville Eight Civil Rights Act of 1960 Ax Handle Saturday Gomillion v. Lightfoot Boynton v. Virginia University of Georgia desegregation riot Rock Hill sit-ins Robert F. Kennedy's Law Day Address Freedom Rides Anniston bombing Birmingham attack Garner v. Louisiana Albany Movement Cambridge movement University of Chicago sit-ins "Second Emancipation Proclamation" Meredith enrollment, Ole Miss riot Atlanta's Berlin Wall "Segregation now, segregation forever" Stand in the Schoolhouse Door 1963 Birmingham campaign Letter from Birmingham Jail Children's Crusade Birmingham riot 16th Street Baptist Church bombing John F. Kennedy's speech to the nation on Civil Rights Detroit Walk to Freedom March on Washington "I Have a Dream" Big Six St. Augustine movement 1964–1968 Twenty-fourth Amendment Chester school protests Bloody Tuesday 1964 Monson Motor Lodge protests Freedom Summer workers' murders Civil Rights Act of 1964 Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States Katzenbach v. McClung 1964–1965 Scripto strike 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches "How Long, Not Long" Voting Rights Act of 1965 Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections March Against Fear White House Conference on Civil Rights Chicago Freedom Movement/Chicago open housing movement Loving v. Virginia Memphis sanitation strike King assassination funeral riots Civil Rights Act of 1968 Poor People's Campaign Green v. County School Board of New Kent County Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. 1968 Olympics Black Power salute
Activist groups	Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights Atlanta Negro Voters League Atlanta Student Movement Black Panther Party Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Committee for Freedom Now Committee on Appeal for Human Rights An Appeal for Human Rights Council for United Civil Rights Leadership Council of Federated Organizations Dallas County Voters League Deacons for Defense and Justice Georgia Council on Human Relations Highlander Folk School Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Lowndes County Freedom Organization Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Montgomery Improvement Association NAACP Youth Council Nashville Student Movement Nation of Islam Northern Student Movement National Council of Negro Women National Urban League Operation Breadbasket Regional Council of Negro Leadership Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Southern Regional Council Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) The Freedom Singers United Auto Workers (UAW) Wednesdays in Mississippi Women's Political Council
Activists	Ralph Abernathy Victoria Gray Adams Zev Aelony Mathew Ahmann Muhammad Ali William G. Anderson Gwendolyn Armstrong Arnold Aronson Ella Baker James Baldwin Marion Barry Daisy Bates Harry Belafonte James Bevel Claude Black Gloria Blackwell Randolph Blackwell Unita Blackwell Ezell Blair Jr. Joanne Bland Julian Bond Joseph E. Boone William Holmes Borders Amelia Boynton Bruce Boynton Raylawni Branch Stanley Branche Ruby Bridges Aurelia Browder H. Rap Brown Ralph Bunche John H. Calhoun Guy Carawan Stokely Carmichael Johnnie Carr James Chaney J. L. Chestnut Shirley Chisholm Colia Lafayette Clark Ramsey Clark Septima Clark Xernona Clayton Eldridge Cleaver Kathleen Cleaver Josephine Dobbs Clement Charles E. Cobb Jr. Annie Lee Cooper Dorothy Cotton Claudette Colvin Vernon Dahmer Jonathan Daniels Abraham Lincoln Davis Angela Davis Joseph DeLaine Dave Dennis Annie Bell Robinson Devine John Wesley Dobbs Patricia Stephens Due Joseph Ellwanger Charles Evers Medgar Evers Myrlie Evers-Williams Chuck Fager James Farmer Walter Fauntroy James Forman Marie Foster Golden Frinks Andrew Goodman Robert Graetz Fred Gray Jack Greenberg Dick Gregory Lawrence Guyot Prathia Hall Fannie Lou Hamer Fred Hampton William E. Harbour Vincent Harding Dorothy Height Audrey Faye Hendricks Lola Hendricks Aaron Henry Oliver Hill Donald L. Hollowell James Hood Myles Horton Zilphia Horton T. R. M. Howard Ruby Hurley Cecil Ivory Jesse Jackson Jimmie Lee Jackson Richie Jean Jackson T. J. Jemison Esau Jenkins Barbara Rose Johns Vernon Johns Frank Minis Johnson Clarence Jones J. Charles Jones Matthew Jones Vernon Jordan Tom Kahn Clyde Kennard A. D. King C.B. King Coretta Scott King Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Sr. Bernard Lafayette James Lawson Bernard Lee Sanford R. Leigh Jim Letherer Stanley Levison John Lewis Viola Liuzzo Z. Alexander Looby Joseph Lowery Clara Luper Danny Lyon Malcolm X Mae Mallory Vivian Malone Bob Mants Thurgood Marshall Benjamin Mays Franklin McCain Charles McDew Ralph McGill Floyd McKissick Joseph McNeil James Meredith William Ming Jack Minnis Amzie Moore Cecil B. Moore Douglas E. Moore Harriette Moore Harry T. Moore Queen Mother Moore William Lewis Moore Irene Morgan Bob Moses William Moyer Elijah Muhammad Diane Nash Charles Neblett Huey P. Newton Edgar Nixon Jack O'Dell James Orange Rosa Parks James Peck Charles Person Homer Plessy Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Fay Bellamy Powell Rodney N. Powell Al Raby Lincoln Ragsdale A. Philip Randolph George Raymond George Raymond Jr. Bernice Johnson Reagon Cordell Reagon James Reeb Frederick D. Reese Walter Reuther Gloria Richardson David Richmond Bernice Robinson Jo Ann Robinson Angela Russell Bayard Rustin Bernie Sanders Michael Schwerner Bobby Seale Pete Seeger Cleveland Sellers Charles Sherrod Alexander D. Shimkin Fred Shuttlesworth Modjeska Monteith Simkins Glenn E. Smiley A. Maceo Smith Kelly Miller Smith Mary Louise Smith Maxine Smith Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson Charles Kenzie Steele Hank Thomas Dorothy Tillman A. P. Tureaud Hartman Turnbow Albert Turner C. T. Vivian A. T. Walden Wyatt Tee Walker Hollis Watkins Walter Francis White Roy Wilkins Hosea Williams Kale Williams Robert F. Williams Q. V. Williamson Andrew Young Whitney Young Sammy Younge Jr. Bob Zellner James Zwerg
By region	Omaha, Nebraska South Carolina
Movement songs	"Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round" "If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus" "Kumbaya" "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" "Oh, Freedom" "This Little Light of Mine" "We Shall Not Be Moved" "We Shall Overcome" "Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom)"
Influences	Nonviolence Padayatra Sermon on the Mount Mahatma Gandhi Ahimsa Satyagraha The Kingdom of God Is Within You Frederick Douglass W. E. B. Du Bois Mary McLeod Bethune
Related	Jim Crow laws Lynching in the United States Plessy v. Ferguson Separate but equal Buchanan v. Warley Hocutt v. Wilson Sweatt v. Painter Hernandez v. Texas Loving v. Virginia African-American women in the movement Jews in the civil rights movement Fifth Circuit Four 16th Street Baptist Church Kelly Ingram Park A.G. Gaston Motel Bethel Baptist Church Brown Chapel Dexter Avenue Baptist Church Holt Street Baptist Church Edmund Pettus Bridge March on Washington Movement African-American churches attacked List of lynching victims in the United States Freedom Schools Freedom songs Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" Voter Education Project 1960s counterculture African American founding fathers of the United States Eyes on the Prize
Legacy	In popular culture Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument Civil Rights Memorial Civil Rights Movement Archive Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument Freedom Rides Museum Freedom Riders National Monument King Center for Nonviolent Social Change Martin Luther King Jr. Day Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial other King memorials Mississippi Civil Rights Museum National Civil Rights Museum National Voting Rights Museum St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument Olympic Black Power Statue
Noted historians	Taylor Branch Clayborne Carson John Dittmer Michael Eric Dyson Chuck Fager Adam Fairclough David Garrow David Halberstam Vincent Harding Steven F. Lawson Doug McAdam Diane McWhorter Charles M. Payne Thomas E. Ricks Timothy Tyson Akinyele Umoja Movement photographers
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