Reckoning with Plessy: 125 Years of Separate But Equal

<p>One hundred and twenty five years ago this week, The Supreme Court announced its decision in the case of <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537">Plessy v Ferguson</a>. The case infamously declared that separate but equal was constitutional. The setting for the case was a train car, but the ramifications on society were profound. And while the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v Board</a> decision 63 years later did away with some of those ramifications, in many ways, Plessy remains with us today. </p><p>Coming in the wake of the civil war, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments make up what are known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Amendments">Reconstruction Amendments</a>, the Amendments intended to guarantee the freedom of formerly enslaved people. </p><p>In many ways, the promise of these Amendments remains unfulfilled. In their immediate aftermath, many state legislatures took steps to undermine them, often upheld by federal courts. The Plessy case came in response to just such a law. </p><p>In 1890 Louisiana State Legislature passed the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_Car_Act">Separate Car Act</a> requiring equal, but separate train cars for White and Black passengers. Two years later, Homer Plessy agreed to participate in a challenge to the law, by boarding a train and refusing to ride in the Black car. He was arrested and challenged his case all the way to The Supreme Court. </p><p>This decision, regularly making top 10 lists of worst Supreme Court decisions of all time, enshrined segregation in law, allowing for Jim Crow, Black codes, and undoing much of the gains made for Black people during the short-lived years of Reconstruction. </p><p>However, the decision wasn't unanimous, there was one lone dissenting opinion by Justice <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Marshall_Harlan">John Marshall Harlan</a>. Justice Harlan earned the nickname, The Great Dissenter, for a number of dissenting opinions in favor of civ