Plessy v. Ferguson: The "Separate but Equal" Doctrine

After the American Civil War, many Southern whites did not accept Black citizens as equals and believed that whites were a superior race. In this spirit, Louisiana passed a law called the Separate Car Act of 1890, which segregated railway cars by race. A group of Black and white citizens called the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens Committee) believed that the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment and wanted to challenge it in court. 

Homer Plessy, a Black citizen who was part of the Comité des Citoyens, volunteered to intentionally break the law. On June 7, 1892, he purchased a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railroad and took an empty seat in a car reserved for whites only. The conductor demanded that he leave his seat and move to a car reserved for the “colored race.” When Plessy refused to move, he was arrested. 

He was brought to trial, and judge John Ferguson found Homer Plessy guilty of violating Louisiana’s Separate Car Act. Plessy disagreed and appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court of the United States. In Plessy v. Ferguson, Plessy and his lawyer argued that segregation was unconstitutional—that is, it went against the Fourteenth Amendment. They argued that segregation was based on the belief that Black citizens were inferior to white citizens and that racial segregation turned Black Americans into second-class citizens. A law that made one race superior and another inferior, he continued, went against the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. ¹

The Supreme Court ruled against Plessy in a 7–1 decision. The majority opinion declared that segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, as long as separate facilities were equal in quality. This ruling became known as the “separate but equal” doctrine, and it permitted the nation to segregate all aspects of life. Hospitals, parks, beaches, water fountains, bathrooms, schools, restaurants, hotels, army units, and cemeteries were all segregated in the years after the Plessy decision. 

Reflection Questions

1. Summarize Homer Plessy’s argument to the Supreme Court.
2. How did the Supreme Court make the case that segregation was constitutional?
3. Why do you think the justices ruled the way they did? What beliefs may have guided their decision-making? 
4. What impact did the Plessy ruling have on the constitutional amendments passed during Reconstruction? 
5. What does this ruling highlight about the relationship between the judicial and legislative branches of government? 

Teach a Facing History lesson featuring this resource.

• 1Erwin Chemerinsky, The Case Against the Supreme Court (New York: Penguin Books, 2013), 36.