Plessy Upholds 'Separate But Equal': Decades of Legalized Racism
The Supreme Court upheld racial segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson on May 18, 1896, establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine that would legalize Jim Crow laws for 58 years. Homer Plessy, who was one-eighth Black, had deliberately violated Louisiana's Separate Car Act by sitting in a whites-only railroad car. The Court ruled 7-1 that separate facilities did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment as long as they were equal, a condition that was never enforced in practice. Justice John Marshall Harlan's lone dissent declared "our Constitution is color-blind." The ruling permitted states to mandate segregation in schools, parks, restaurants, hospitals, cemeteries, and every other public facility. Plessy was not overturned until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
May 18, 1896
130 years ago
Key Figures & Places
United States Supreme Court
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Plessy v. Ferguson
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separate but equal
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Supreme Court of the United States
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Plessy v. Ferguson
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Separate but equal
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Melville Fuller
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Racial segregation
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Southern United States
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History of the United States
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