Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson is a 1896 by the Supreme Court of the United States decided the case, considered the landmark decision in the history of the Court. The court had to decide whether a law of the State of Louisiana, the separate compartments for citizens white and black skin color prescribed in railway trains, contrary to the Constitution of the United States. It said no with seven to judge voice and announced that the provision of separate facilities for whites and blacks, under certain conditions permitted. That judgment was de facto the principle of separate but equal, ie "Separate but equal " established as the basis of racial segregation in the South. Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1954 was overruled by the judgment in the case of Brown v. Board of Education again.
The name of the event, it follows, according to the American legal traditions, from the names of the two people involved as litigants, the shoemaker Homer Plessy and Judge John Howard Ferguson, as well as the abbreviation for the taken from the Latin legal term of art "versus" ( German: " against ").
Facts of the case
The reason of Plessy v. Ferguson in legal dispute was received on July 19, 1890 passed by the State of Louisiana under the name Separate Car Act law. This prescribed a penalty of U.S. $ 25 or 20 days in jail for trains separate cars for whites and blacks and for violations. Some citizens of Louisiana decided to challenge this law legally. They founded to a Citizens ' Committee to Test the constitutionality of the Separate Car Act ( Citizens Committee to review the constitutionality of the Separate Car Act ) and convinced the then 30 -year-old shoemaker Homer Plessy ( 1862-1925 ), to violate the law intentionally. Although Plessy was after the one- drop rule because a black great-grandmother legally as a black man, however, was not outwardly recognizable as such. Furthermore, the train operating company East Louisiana Railroad Company the legal action against this law also supported, albeit for purely economic considerations. Albion Tourgée (1838-1905), a renowned white civil rights lawyer from New York, agreed to hear the case without a fee in court.
Homer Plessy acquired on June 7, 1892 first-class ticket for a train to the East Louisiana Railway from New Orleans to Covington, both cities in the state of Louisiana. After taking in a compartment for White place, he informed the train conductor about his ancestry. He was then asked to vacate the place and put instead into a compartment for blacks. After he had refused to do so, he was arrested, but released a day later on bail of U.S. $ 500 again. The entire incident had been held to discuss the case with the East Louisiana Railway.
Judgments of the lower courts
Homer Plessy was found a month after the incident, the District Criminal Court of the community New Orleans for violating the law guilty (State of Louisiana v. Plessy, 1892). The presiding judge of this court was John Howard Ferguson. He had stated in previous decisions, the application of the law in trains which crossed the borders of the State of Louisiana and thus were traveling in other countries, unconstitutional. In the case of Homer Plessy, he decided, however, to the contrary on the grounds that the state rail operator, which would only operate on the territory of Louisiana could be legislated. He condemned Plessy accordance with the law and declared that under the limitation mentioned constitutional.
In the same year the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana Plessys refused appeal against the judgment of Ferguson from (Ex parte Plessy, 1892). Two years later, the Separate Car Act was extended to include provisions to separate waiting areas at stations. On April 13, 1896, finally came to trial of Plessys again appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. His reasoning was based on an impermissible interference with his rights as an American citizen by the Separate Car Act and on the refusal of the law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment equality. According to his lawyer Albion Tourgée concerned that the law implies an inferiority of black citizens.
Supreme Court decision
On May 18, 1896, the court held under the chairmanship of Melville W. Fuller with 7 to 1 judges' votes in an authored by Justice Henry Billings Brown judgment to dismiss the case of Plessy, as the provisions of the Act are constitutional. In the grounds of the decision Brown wrote among other things:
" [ ... ] The fact that the Separate Car Act does not violate the 13th Amendment, which, except as punishment for a crime, abolished slavery and forced labor, is to clearly to justify it. [ ... ] A law that includes only a legal distinction between the white and black races - a distinction that is based on the skin color of the two races, and will always exist as long as white people from those of another race distinguishable because of their skin color are - does not intend to undermine the legal equality of the two races. [ ... ] The purpose of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but it is in the nature of things that it could not be the aim of abolishing the skin color -based differences, or, in the opposed to political, social equality or a mixture of the two races to enforce conditions that are satisfactory for both. [ ... ] "
The court rejected Plessys views with respect to a breach of the 13th Amendment as well as the view that the law would imply an inferiority of blacks and thus violate the 14th Amendment. The Court considers that the Separate Car Act put only usual social principles in the form of a valuation neutral separation between whites and blacks by. Each in this regard claimed rating of blacks as inferior would not arise from the law, but solely from the interpretation of that law by the blacks themselves in the eyes of the court majority, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution referred only to legal and political equality, but not to social equality.
John Marshall Harlan was the only judge who rejected this judgment in a minority opinion. He predicted that this judgment would be considered in the future to be just as disgraceful as was the verdict in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, and based its decision, inter alia, the following versions:
" [ ... ] The white race sees himself as the dominant race in this country. And it is in terms of reputation, achievements, education, wealth and power. It is, because I have no doubt it will be for all time if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds to the principles of constitutional freedoms. But in view of the Constitution and before the eyes of the law there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is blind to skin color, neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. With regard to the civil rights all people are equal before the law. The weakest is the strongest par. The law provides for man as man, and takes no account his environment or his skin color when it comes to his rights guaranteed by the supreme law of this land rights. It is therefore unfortunate that this High Court, the highest court is, get to the fundamental law of this country to the view that a State may regulate solely on the basis of race recourse to the civil rights of its citizens. [ ... ] "
Consequences of the judgment
The judgment had initially no significant immediate consequences. A potentially expected wide indignation in the media or the public remained as such from notable protests. Homer Plessy pled in January 1897 of violating the law guilty and paid the provided by the Separate Car Act penalty of U.S. $ 25. He later led a life without further incidents and died 1925.
In terms of their broader consequences the decision, however, had dramatic consequences for public life in the South. By the judgment the doctrine Separate but Equal was de facto ( "Separate but equal " ) established, although this formulation was included in the judgment in Harlan text only versions. Also in the majority opinion of the reverse wording " Equal but separate " was quoted from the law of the state in question Louisiana only at one point. The decision thus formed, together with the judgment in the case of Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education, three years later, the legal basis for the legitimacy of existing and the adoption of more than Jim Crow Laws designated laws to racial segregation in the South. Together with the " Atlanta Compromise " speech, in which the black civil rights activist Booker T. Washington in 1895, the then social isolation of blacks accepted and proposed a peaceful coexistence with the Whites with the objective of progressive improvement, delivered in Plessy v. Ferguson versions contained the court majority, the ideological basis for racial segregation.
Plessy v. Ferguson The verdict was repealed by the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. This meant the official end to the principle Separate but Equal and thus for the legally sanctioned racial segregation in the United States.