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Plessy v. Ferguson - Significance, "separate But Equal", Further Readings

Petitioner

Homer A. Plessy

Respondent

J. H. Ferguson, New Orleans Criminal District Court Judge

Petitioner's Claim

That Louisiana's law requiring blacks to ride in separate railroad cars violated Plessy's right to equal protection under the law.

Chief Lawyers for Petitioner

F. D. McKenney, S. F. Phillips

Chief Lawyer for Respondent

M. J. Cunningham, Louisiana Attorney General

Justices for the Court

Henry Billings Brown (writing for the Court), Stephen Johnson Field, Melville Weston Fuller, Horace Gray, Rufus Wheeler Peckham, George Shiras, Jr., Edward Douglass White

Justices Dissenting

John Marshall Harlan I (David Josiah Brewer did not participate)

Place

Washington, D.C.

Date of Decision

18 May 1896

Decision

That laws providing for "separate but equal" treatment of blacks and whites were constitutional.

Related Cases

  • Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1879).
  • Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883).
  • Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886).
  • Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938).
  • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

Sources

Bradley, David and Shelley Fisher Fishkin eds. The Encyclopedia of Civil Rights in America. Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 1998.

Additional Topics

Plessy v. Ferguson - Significance

The Supreme Court's decision effectively sanctioned discriminatory state legislation. Plessy was not fully overruled until the 1950s and 1960s, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. In the years following the Supreme Court's 1875 decision in United States v. Cruikshank, which limited the federal government's ability to protect African Americans' civil rights, many states in the South…

Plessy v. Ferguson - Further Readings

Plessy v. Ferguson - "separate But Equal"

The "separate but equal" standard established by the Supreme Court in Plessy has become more or less synonymous with institutionalized racial segregation. According to the "separate but equal" doctrine, if a state could prove that blacks enjoyed accommodations equal to those for whites, that state could legally sanction segregated schools and other public facilities, as was the case in most of the…

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