Plessy V. Ferguson: An 60 Year Setback to True Equality

There have been many cases that have provided extreme precedent to how our country treats citizens and how the Supreme Court has been able to tackle laws. Marbury V. Madison gave the court the right of judicial review. Roe V. Wade gave women the right to legally have an abortion. Brown V. Board of Education mandated non-segregated schools in all states of the Union. But if there was one case that setback one group of people, specifically African Americans for generations and still affects them today, that would be Plessy V. Ferguson.

On June 9th, 1892, Homer Plessy, a black man, sat in an empty seat in an whites-only car on the train in Louisiana. He was arrested for sitting in the car and he was later put on trial. He was convicted for violating a Louisiana law that banned black people from sitting in white cars, but he appealed and petitioned to the judge that this separate cars law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. This case reached the Supreme Court, and in a 7 to 1 ruling, the court argued that Louisiana was able to have separate cars on their trains for whites and blacks if their cars were equal. This was where the phrase "separate but equal" was coined, and ended up setting a dangerous precedent for segregation throughout the South.

The only judge that dissented in this case was Justice John Marshall Harlan, who did not understand how with the abolishment of slavery, there could still exist division. He believed that "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." He insisted that if the law and Constitution did not allow for race determining one's social standing, then a law that separated black and white people enforces the idea that one race is in fact superior to another. 

For decades, African Americans faced significant discrimination and segregation because of this ruling. The facilities in public provided for black people were consistently inferior to those given to white people. White people were able to be in superior standing to black people further because their public schools were more funded and had better education, which inherently preserved the racial economic divide and education gap.

It was only during Brown V. Board of Education in 1954 unanimous decision when the court ruled that the idea of "separate but equal" was and never could be equal. The segregation of white and black students, they argued, was in clear violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and therefore segregation legally should never be allowed. Reversing the precedent set sixty years prior, the Court was able to change their stance because they were forced to. IN an increasingly political and racial climate, the Court was able to understand why "separate but equal" could never be truly equal. 


Sources:
https://ballotpedia.org/Plessy_v._Ferguson
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/antebellum/landmark_plessy.html