Segregation Case Study: The Louisiana Railway Accommodations Act & The Supreme Court Ruling: Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Louisiana Railway Accommodations Act (1890) (excerpts/link to original)

SEC. 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana, That all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this State, shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races... No person or persons, shall be permitted to occupy seats in coaches, other than the ones assigned to them on account of the race they belong to.

SEC. 2. Be it further enacted, etc., That the officers of such passenger trains shall have power and are hereby required to assign each passenger to the coach or compartment used for the race to which such passenger belongs; any passenger insisting on going into a coach or compartment to which by race he does not belong, shall be liable to a fine of twenty-five dollars or in lieu thereof to imprisonment... and any officer of any railroad insisting on assigning a passenger to a coach or compartment other than the one set aside for the race to which said passenger belongs shall be liable to a fine of twenty-five dollars or in lieu thereof to imprisonment... .

SEC. 3. Be it further enacted, etc., That all officers and directors of railway companies ... conductor(s) or other employees of such passenger train... who shall refuse or neglect to carry out the provisions of this act shall on conviction be fined...

Historical Context of the Plessy v. Ferguson case

March 6, 1857: 'Dred Scott’ Decision.

Supreme Court Dred Scott v. Sandford rules that African-Americans, both free and slave, are not citizens, and cannot sue in federal courts.

December 6, 1865- Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in United States

August 20, 1866- President Andrew Johnson signs Proclamation 157—Declaring that Peace, Order, Tranquility, and Civil Authority Now Exists in and Throughout the Whole of the United States of America (declares the Civil War over)

July 9, 1868: Fourteenth Amendment Grants Citizenship Rights to All Americans

Section one of the 14th Amendment reads:. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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.

March 1, 1875. Civil Rights Act of 1875 becomes law.

The new law required: “That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude.”

October 15, 1883: Supreme Court rules the 1875 Civil Rights Act unconstitutional. The court said 14th Amendment does not give Federal Government power to ban private discrimination

1890- Louisiana passes the Railway Accommodations Act, requiring railways to “provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races”.

1891- Black Civil Rights group called “Citizens Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law in order to challenge the constitutionality of the law”

June 7, 1892 - Homer Plessy is arrested.

Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black, was arrested and convicted of violating the law. He appealed to the Louisiana State Supreme Court, arguing the segregation law violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids states from denying "to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". The Louisiana Supreme court upheld his conviction. Plessy then filed a petition against Louisiana's Judge John H. Ferguson, and appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court

Below is a picture of the Supreme Court Justices in 1896

Section #1 Guiding Question: Why do some people believe the Federal Government does not have a responsibility to stop Segregation?

In 1896, Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote the Majority Opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, which said... (modified/link to original)

Mr. Plessy argues this law goes against the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution

1. It does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. A law creating a legal difference between the white and colored races — does not destroy the legal equality of the two races, or reestablish involuntary servitude.

2. It does not conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment, which was to enforce legal equality of the two races, not to enforce social equality. Laws requiring, their separation does not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other.

We think enforced separation of the races does not takes away the privileges of the colored man under the law, nor denies him the equal protection of the law..

If Plessy’s argument that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority, it is not because of the law, but only because the colored race chooses to believe it does.

If the two races are to be socially equal, it must happen naturally, and voluntarily.

Legislation is powerless to end racial prejudice, and trying to do so will only make it worse. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane

Section #2 Guiding Question: Why do some people believe the Federal Government does have a responsibility to stop segregation?

In 1896, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote the Dissenting Opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, which said... , (modified/link to original)

This legislation is inconsistent with equality of rights of citizenship, and with the personal liberty enjoyed by everyone within the United States.

The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments removed the race line from our government. In view of the Constitution there is in this country no superior, class of citizens. Our Constitution is color-blind, all citizens are equal before the law.

In my opinion, this judgment will be as harmful as the Dred Scott Case.

Laws deciding civil rights based on race will keep alive a conflict of races. Being able to travel in the same railroad car as another race is not about Social Equality as much as when members of the same races go the ballot box to vote.

If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways, they will not be worse than the evils that will result from state laws limiting civil rights based on race. It is difficult to boast our country as one of freedom when laws can practically put the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of “equal” accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done.

I am of the opinion that the statute of Louisiana is inconsistent with the personal liberty of citizens, white and black, in that State, and hostile to both the spirit and letter of the Constitution of the United States.

What was the result?

The Supreme Court ruled 7-1 in favor of the Constitutionality of the Louisiana law.

As a consequence of the Plessy versus Ferguson Supreme Court Ruling, which decided that “separate but equal” was not Unconstitutional, decades of discriminatory laws and practices were allowed to happen in the United States. In the South these laws are known as “Jim Crow” Laws.

“Jim Crow” laws included segregating public places, public transportation (such as trains and buses), restrooms, drinking fountains, and public schools. However, while segregation in the South was actually built into the laws, segregation in other parts of the country was allowed to develop as a result of social practices. For example, banks, housing communities, and realtors used practices that led to the segregation of communities.

While it would take the Civil Rights Movement to fight against segregation in many public places (Such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott), the idea of “separate but equal” in schools was famously struck down by the unanimous ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954, which was argued by NAACP lawyers such as Thurgood Marshall (pictured below)

In 1954, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in his Opinion in Brown v. Board... (excerpts)

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to damage the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system.

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place.

This disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. We have now announced that such segregation is a denial of the equal protection of the laws.