Plessy v. Ferguson — "Separate but Equal"

On May 18, 1896, the United States Supreme Court ruled 7-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities were constitutional, so long as the separate facilities were "equal" — a condition that was never enforced in practice. The case arose when Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man who was one-eighth Black, deliberately boarded a whites-only railcar in Louisiana to challenge the state's Separate Car Act. Plessy was arrested, convicted, and appealed to the Supreme Court. Justice Henry Billings Brown, writing for the majority, argued that the 14th Amendment "could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color." The lone dissenter, Justice John Marshall Harlan, wrote one of the most prophetic dissents in American legal history: "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." Plessy v. Ferguson provided the legal framework for Jim Crow — the comprehensive system of racial segregation that governed the American South for the next 58 years. Under Jim Crow, Black Americans were forced into separate and invariably inferior schools, hospitals, restaurants, water fountains, waiting rooms, and cemeteries. The decision would not be overturned until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which declared segregated schools "inherently unequal" — but the social and economic damage of six decades of legal apartheid continues to shape American life.