Plessy vs Ferguson

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What was Plessy vs Ferguson?


The case of Plessy vs Ferguson started in the state of Louisiana. In 1892 the state of Louisiana had a law that required whites and blacks to ride in different train cars. It also required that separate train cars be equal. A man named Homer Plessy challenged the law when he attempted to ride in a white-only train car although he was one-eighth black. He was arrested and his case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Plessy’s lawyer argued that his clients rights, granted him by the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees the same rights to all citizens and equal protection of those rights, were violated by this Louisiana law. The case ended in a 7-1 decision, ruling that the Louisiana Law was valid.


Was the Plessy vs Ferguson decision morally correct?


The Louisiana law upheld in Plessy vs Ferguson inferred that blacks were somehow inferior to whites according to the lone dissenter, John Marshall Harlan. Supporting this assertion, Harlan pointed out that the same Louisiana law also had a provision for nurses attending children of the other race- this allowed black women who were nannies to white children to be in the white-only cars. This demonstrated, that a black person could be in the white-only car as long as it was obvious that they were a social subordinate or domestic. Amar, Akhil Reed (2011). "Plessy v. Ferguson and the Anti-Canon". Pepperdine Law Review. 39 (1): 7590. Moral truths of freedom, fairness, and respect all have something in common when they are operating effectively, they all are life protecting or life-enhancing for all. Truly a statute that allows individuals to be treated as inferior could not be called respectful, fair, or life-enhancing. Harlan's predicted that this bad decision would eventually become as infamous as the Court's decision in the 1857 case Dred Scott v. Sandford in which the Court 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 proved to be correct. Both Dred Scott and Plessy usually sit at the top of lists of the Supreme Court's worst decisions.[28] Larson, Edward J. (2011). "Anti-Canonical Considerations". Pepperdine Law Review.39 (1): 1-12.



1904 caricature of "White" and "Jim Crow" rail cars by John T. McCutcheon


What precedent Plessy vs Ferguson set?


Plessy v. Ferguson was important because it essentially established the constitutionality of racial segregation. As a controlling legal precedent, it prevented constitutional challenges to racial segregation for more than half a century, thereby establishing an immoral practice.


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