![]() Ferguson, judge of the criminal District Court for the parish of Orleans, and setting forth in substance the following facts: ![]() This was a petition for writs of prohibition and certiorari, originally filed in the Supreme Court of the State by Plessy, the plaintiff in error, against the Hon. Of the race they belong to and requiring the officer of the passenger train to assign each passenger to the coach or compartment assigned for the race to which he or she belong and imposing fines or imprisonment upon passengers insisting on going into a coach or compartment other than the one set aide for the race to which he or she belongs and conferring upon officers of the train power to refuse to carry on the train passengers refusing to occupy the coach or compartment assigned to them, and exempting the railway company from liability for such refusal, are not in conflict with the provisions either of the Thirteenth Amendment or of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. 111, requiring railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in that State, to provide equal, but separate, accommodations for the white and colored races, by 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 and providing that no person shall be permitted to occupy seats in coaches other than the ones assigned to them, on account The statute of Louisiana, acts of 1890, c. Justice Harlan's dissent is the most notable element of Plessy, although its rhetoric is less progressive upon closer analysis than some suggest.ĮRROR TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF LOUISIANA The separate-but-equal reasoning was thoroughly discredited even before it was officially overruled by Brown v. Some parts of Harlan's opinion were less progressive, such as racist language directed toward Asians.Ī family illness prevented Brewer from considering the case. Accordingly, all citizens should have equal access to civil rights. He argued that the constitution was color-blind and that the United States had no class system. In a dissent that ultimately became more influential than the majority opinion, Harlan likened the decision to Dred Scott v. (This was somewhat true regarding railway cars, but it was much less true in other types of segregated facilities.) He suggested that African-Americans were responsible for interpreting the law as connoting inferiority, and he pointed out that there was not a meaningful difference in quality between whites-only and African-American railway cars. Plessy was convicted and fined.įinding nothing discriminatory about the Louisiana law, Brown stated that separate treatment did not imply the inferiority of African-Americans but merely was a matter of state policy. ![]() Their theory failed, and the judge found that Louisiana could enforce this law insofar as it affected railroads within its boundaries. Plessy's lawyers argued that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The train was stopped so that he could be removed, and a trial proceeded. When Plessy was told to vacate the whites-only car and sit in the African-American car, he refused and was arrested by the detective. It knew about the intention to challenge the law, and the Committee of Citizens also enlisted a private detective to detain Plessy on the train so that he could be charged under the Separate Car Act. The railroad cooperated in the test case because it viewed the law as imposing unnecessary additional costs through the purchase of more railroad cars. He bought a first-class ticket and boarded the whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad in a train for Covington. They asked Plessy, who was technically African-American under Louisiana law, to sit in a whites-only car. The Comite des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) was a group of New Orleans residents from a variety of ethnic backgrounds that sought to repeal this law. This law required that railroads provide separate cars and other accommodations for whites and African-Americans. Homer Plessy, a free man who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth of African descent, agreed to participate in a test case to challenge a Louisiana law known as the Separate Car Act.
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