March 20, 2021 • 23 mins
This 2015 episode covers a landmark legal moment. The ruling in this infamous U.S. Supreme Court case stated that segregation was legal as long as the separate facilities were equal.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. One of our episodes coming up this week
includes a brief mention of the U. S. Supreme Court
decision Lessie Versus Ferguson, which upheld racial segregation as long
as the segregated facilities are equal. We're bringing our episode
on Lessie versus. Ferguson out of the archive to give
a little bit more context to that. And when this
(00:23):
episode originally came out, we followed up with two episodes
on Brown v Board which overturned this ruling. We mentioned
that those are coming at the top of the episode,
but since we have other classics lined up over the
next few weeks, just to be aware, we're not going
to be replaying those this time around, so don't don't
wait for those to show up in your feed, but
they still are in the archive if folks are interested.
(00:44):
This originally came out February Welcome to Stuff You Missed
in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and
I'm Fry. We are going to spend a few episodes
(01:08):
over the next few weeks talking about the two Supreme
Court cases that uh sort of in a way book
ended segregation in the United States, and plus E versus Ferguson,
the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was legal as long
as the separate facilities were equal, And then many years later,
(01:29):
Brown versus Board of Education overturned Plusy versus Ferguson and
found that school segregation was unconstitutional. That decision was such
a big deal and was so monumental and led to
such a huge backlash that we're actually going to split
that part of the conversation into two episodes later down
the road. So those two facts about plus E versus
(01:51):
Ferguson and Brown versus Board are things that most people
who have studied the civil rights movement or United States
history in any way are pretty familiar with. But I
think for me and for you, both both of us
and probably a lot of other people, the names of
the cases and what they did is the beginning and
(02:12):
the end of the conversation. Like, I had no idea
what the story was behind, how these cases came to be,
or any of that until I really got into researching
them for these episodes. So that's why we're going to
spend some time on this to talk about who the
people were involved in Plessy versus Ferguson and Brown versus Board,
and sort of the journey that these cases took to
come to the Supreme Court in the first place. So
(02:34):
the context that we're going to start with today is
actually the U. S. Civil War. There are people who
will argue that the Civil War was not fought over slavery,
that it was about states rights or economics. And while
states rights and economics were certainly involved, the primary rights
in question were the right to own slaves and the
right to travel freely with slaves into states where slavery
(02:56):
was illegal. The primary economic factor at issue, you was
that the Southern economy really relied on slavery in labor
intensive industries such as cotton farming. You could also make
the argument that the Civil War was fought over over
neither of those two things, That it was fought because
the North wanted to preserve the Union of the States,
(03:16):
but the South wanted to secede from that union. And
while strictly speaking this is also true, the big factor
that was driving states to succede, which was specifically cited
in the declarations of causes that were issued by Georgia, Mississippi,
South Carolina, and Texas was slavery. This is all relevant
because after the Union won the war in eighteen sixty five,
(03:38):
slavery was abolished in the places where it was still legal.
The federal government tried to rebuild the Southern infrastructure and
encourage racial equality in a period that became known as
the Reconstruction. Three amendments were added to the United States
Constitution as part of this effort. The thirteenth Amendment formally
abolished slavery, the fourteenth Amen meant granted citizenship to anyone
(04:01):
who was born in the United States or nationalized, which
included former slaves. And the fifteenth Amendment read, in part,
the right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States
or by any State, on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude. There was a lot more going
on during Reconstruction. All of the twists and turns could
(04:24):
easily be their own whole series of episodes. But to
make an extremely long story short, the South overall resented
the largely Northern pressure to free slaves and give them
the right to vote. This was especially true as black
officials were elected to office in the South and for
a brief period of time, some progress was made towards
rachel equality. As the Southern states were readmitted to the
(04:48):
Union and the federal government had less influence on how
those states were run, the states started passing laws that
restricted African Americans right to vote by basically taking an
advantage of the fact that most of them had been slaves,
and during their time as slaves, they had not been
allowed to learn to read or write, or to earn
money or to hold property. So new laws required that
(05:10):
in order to vote, people had to pass a literacy test,
or pay a poll tax, or own property, something that
in general white people in the South could do much
more easily than black people could. Some of these tests
were also virtually unpassable. But we're only required for black voters.
But their right to vote restricted, Black Americans lost many
(05:32):
of their prior gains in terms of representation in the government. Afterwards, states,
both Southern states and border states enacted segregation laws that
became known as Jim Crow laws, which separated black and
white citizens in everything from hospitals to water fountains. Just
the name Jim Crow was an insult. It came from
a heavily stereotypical character in minstrel shows. These laws were
(05:57):
enforced not just through the usual means of making arrests
and bringing people to trial, but also through a social
structure that insisted that black people be subservient to white people.
The laws were also enforced more directly through intimidation and violence,
up to and including murder. White supremacy organizations like the
Ku Klux Klan really flourished, and violence against black citizens
(06:20):
at the hand of white citizens became both commonplace and
rarely prosecuted. Before we get into talking about a Jim
Crow law and how it led to a Supreme Court
ruling that legalized segregation, do you want to have a
word from a sponsor? Sure stupendous? So to return to
(06:45):
the story of Plessy versus Ferguson. One example of these
Jim Crow laws was Louisiana's separate car law. And this
law was to quote promote the comfort of passengers on
their trains by providing quote equal at separate accommodations for
the white and colored races. So anyone who boarded a
car in Louisiana that was not meant for their race
(07:07):
could be fined or jailed. Interracial couples were not exempt
from the law, nor were black maids and servants who
were traveling with white employers. Really, the only exception was
nurses who were taking care of children of another race.
This was signed into law on July tenth. Thanks to
its sizable black population, including slaves, free slaves, and creoles
(07:32):
of color, and to the Union's presence in New Orleans
during much of the Civil War, New Orleans have become
home to a large population of affluent, politically active black citizens.
When the separate car Law was passed, activists in New
Orleans set to work immediately trying to put together a
plan to challenge it. On September one, eighteen, prominent black
(07:53):
and Creole New Orleans citizens formed the Citizens Committee to
test the constitutionality of the Separate Our Law, or the Committoyer.
They got legal help from a white lawyer named Albion W. Tourge.
He was from New York and had been an abolitionist.
Tourge waived his fees and he promised to argue the
case before the Supreme Court. Shouldn't make it all the
(08:14):
way there, since Tourge was both very busy and also
very far away from Louisiana. They also had the help
of a local lawyer named James C. Walker. The committee
settled on a strategy of civil disobedience. They would find
someone to break the separate car law and get arrested,
and then they would take the case through the court system.
(08:35):
This they hoped would lead to overturning segregation, not just
on Louisiana trains, but in all of the United States.
Then they started looking for volunteers who the law would
consider to be colored, but who looked white. Legal distinctions
about who was considered to be part of which race
really varied from state to state and through the years,
and as a general rule, particularly in the South, the
(08:58):
law required smaller and small our amounts of African American
ancestry to be considered colored, and eventually this came down
to the one drop rule, meaning that in a lot
of places, if a person had one drop of African blood,
that person was considered to be black. Candidates had to
be law abiding citizens with good reputations, people who would
(09:20):
not be dismissed as disreputable, and who had nothing in
their background that could be that could become an easy
excuse for not taking their case seriously. Their first attempt
to break the separate car law was made by a
man named Daniel did Dunes, and he was a musician.
He was also the son of one of the members
of the committee, and he was one eighth black. He
boarded the first class car of a train on February
(09:45):
and then he told the conductor that he was colored.
He was removed from the train and arrested, but before
the case could go to trial, the charges against him
were dismissed because the state Supreme Court ruled in a
different case that state segregation laws couldn't apply to interstate travel.
Day Dune's tickets had been to Mobile, Alabama, so per
(10:05):
the Louisiana Supreme Court, that ride was regulated by federal
law and not state law. The committee had actually chosen
an interstate ticket on purpose, because they were hoping to
draw on interstate commerce commerce laws in the case. The
committee tried again, and this time the man breaking the
law was Homer Plessy, a thirty year old shoemaker. He
(10:26):
was also one eighth African American. One of his great
grandmothers had been black, and he had skin light enough
that he would not be questioned boarding the car. He
bought his first class ticket to Covington, Louisiana on the
East Louisiana Railroad, so that the whole trip would take
place within the borders of the state. Nobody raised any
questions when plus He boarded the first class car, and
(10:48):
different accounts vary and exactly how the conductor came to
know that he was legally a colored man and in
the wrong place, and some of the versions Plus he
just told him, and in others the conductor asked because
he knew that the Committee was sending someone to test
the segregation law that day, and in others the conductor
asked everyone in the car because it was part of
(11:10):
his job to confirm the race of all passengers and
that everyone was in the correct car on the train.
Regardless of how it played out, and this information came
to light, the train's conductor, J. J. Dowling asked Homer
Plessy to leave the train after learning his race, and
even though the law designated separate but equal cars, there
(11:30):
was not actually a car for black passengers on the
train that day. Plus he refused, he was arrested by
a private detective hired by the committee and jailed. Members
of the Citizens Committee pulled their money to bail Plusy
out Plessy's trial was set for October thirteenth, eight two.
(11:51):
James Walker, who we mentioned earlier, argued that his arrest
violated the thirteenth and fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Previous
court rulings had expanded on the interpretation of the thirteenth
Amendment not just to include literal slavery, but also quote
badges of slavery and service ude, which is how an
amendment that was set up to abolish slavery was being
(12:13):
applied to the matter of being segregated on a train.
But Lionel Adams, the attorney for the prosecution, argued that
the Separate Car Act reduced racial tension and so it
was actually good for the state. He also argued that
because the separate cars were equal, it was not discriminatory
to separate people into them by their race, although we're
(12:33):
not clear on how that applied given that there was
reportedly no actual car for black passengers on that particular train.
Judge John H. Ferguson ruled in favor of the prosecution
on November eighteen, and the next step in the case
was the appeal. But again, we're gonna pause for a
second for a word from a sponsor before we dig
(12:53):
into all of that juicy material. So let's let's go
back to the story, which at this point is going
to go to the Supreme Court. Plus, his case went
to the Louisiana Supreme Court first, which heard it on
November of that year. The arguments were essentially the same
(13:16):
as what had been argued in the court before, and
in what came as a surprise to no one, the
court ruled that the law was not discriminatory because it
applied equally to everyone. It would actually be four years
before the case would get to the U. S. Supreme Corps, and,
as he had promised when originally agreeing to work with
the Citizens Committee, Albion Tourge planned to argue the case
(13:37):
before the Supreme Court rather than appealing immediately. He actually
decided to take some time to try to raise funds
for the case and work out his strategy. In addition
to that, he and the committee were also hoping that
by delaying a little bit, they would find themselves before
a court that would see their case more favorably. Based
on decisions that the court had already issued, Justices eight
(14:00):
two were really not very likely to find that the
separate car law was unconstitutional. The President was just not
running in favor of this case. So the committee crossed
their fingers that some of the justices would be replaced
before they submitted their own case, and in eight two
Supreme Court justices died and new appointees took their place. However,
(14:23):
this did not look much better for Plessy in the
Citizens Committee than the previous court had. One of the
new justices was a former Confederate soldier and the other
had a reputation for being quite conservative. The new court
also set an immediate precedent of upholding other Jim Crow laws. Plus,
in just those couple of years, the overall racial climate
(14:44):
in the United States had gotten worse instead of better. So,
in spite of the fact that things seemed to be
kind of running against them towards a submitted the case,
which he prepared along with Walker and Samuel F. Phillips,
and he submitted it four review towards the end of eighteen.
The Supreme Court heard the case, which was now known
as plus E versus Ferguson, in eight nine six. In
(15:07):
the written briefs and oral arguments, Tourge and team argued
that the separate car law was unconstitutional, in several ways,
including the following. This is very much an abridged list,
but first up, it violated the Fourteenth Amendment from several
different angles by giving white citizens and colored citizens different
(15:27):
rights and protections under the law. Second, while proponents of
the law claimed it was for the comfort of both
black and white passengers, Tourge argued that it was really
for the comfort of white passengers at the expense of
black passengers, and therefore discriminatory. Second, while proponents of the
law claimed that it was for the comfort of both
black and white passengers, Tourge argued that it was really
(15:50):
for the comfort of white passengers at the expense of
black passengers, and therefore discriminatory. He also argued that the
law violated the fourteenth of then meants due process clause
by giving train conductors the power of law enforcement while
giving train passengers no legal recourse about decisions the conductors made.
(16:11):
And last that it created conditions of subjection and inferiority,
which previous court decisions had interpreted to be in violation
of the Thirteenth Amendment. Representing Louisiana's side was Alexander Peter Morse,
whose legal specialty was federal appeals He argued that the
separate car law was designed to prevent problems and serve
(16:32):
the common good, so, rather than making African American passengers
second class citizens, according to him, it actually protected them
from harassment and discrimination by white passengers. He also noted
several prior cases in which the Supreme Court had had
upheld States rights in the matter of segregation, and he
said that the rights at issue in the separate car
(16:53):
law were not civil rights at all. They were social
rights which are not constitutionally protected. The Supreme Court announced
its decision on May eighteenth. Of eight, Justice David J.
Brewer excused himself from participating because his daughter had just died,
and the remaining eight judges upheld the constitutionality of the
(17:14):
separate car law in a seven to one ruling. Henry
Billings Brown wrote the majority opinion, which dismissed the idea
that the separate car law violated the Thirteenth Amendment entirely.
He also cited several cases in which the Court had
upheld States rights to segregate, and he dismissed the idea
that providing separate facilities was inherently discriminatory. This is the thing,
(17:38):
he wrote on that point, we consider the underlying fallacy
of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that
the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored
race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so,
it is not by reason of anything found in the Act,
but solely because the colored race chooses to put that
(17:59):
construct and upon it. So it goes on to say
that if quote, the colored race became the majority in
the state legislature and enacted the same law, that white
people would not think themselves inferior because of it. This
was the point where I had to stop reading Supreme
Court rulings and take a little break. That's probably for
(18:20):
the best in terms of your nual stability. There's a
lot that's really offensive in in the whole majority opinion,
and and the part where it's like this, you guys
are making a big deal out of it. This is
on you, not on us. That was the part that
made me like, uh, yes, I feel like they haven't
changed very much, because this feels like the stop playing
(18:41):
the race card of the late nineteenth century. So the
sole dissenter and all of this was John Marshall Harlan
who went against the majority with so much vigor that
he became known as the Great Dissenter. His dissent accurately
predicted what was going to happen next, which was the
States were going to you. Is this ruling as a
justification to enact a whole lot more segregation laws, uh,
(19:05):
and to be more blatantly districted, discriminatory, feeling like they
had the backing of the Supreme Court in doing so.
One of his statements goes like this quote, In my opinion,
the judgment this day rendered will in time proved to
be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this
tribunal in the dread Scott case. So if you're not
(19:25):
familiar with that one, that's dread Scott versus Sanford, when
dread Scott, who was a slave, sued for his freedom,
and the court decided that anyone with African ancestry, whether
they were a slave or free, was not intended to
be a citizen of the United States and therefore was
not entitled to bring such a suit in federal court.
The court also ruled that the federal government couldn't prohibit
(19:46):
slavery in territory that it had acquired after the United
States was founded. Harlan's dissent also argues strenuously against the
idea that segregation was good for race relations. To quote
s Exteam, millions of whites are in no danger from
the presence here of eight millions of blacks. The destinies
of the two races in this country are indissolubly linked together,
(20:09):
and the interests of both require that the common government
of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate
to be planted under the sanction of law. What can
more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and
perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races than state enactments,
which in fact proceed on the ground that colored citizens
(20:33):
are so far inferior and degraded that they cannot be
allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens. That,
as all will admit, is the real meaning of such
legislation as was enacted in Louisiana. Yeah, his whole tone
is basically, Uh, it's completely obvious to everyone that the
intent here is to subjugate an entire race of people,
(20:54):
and upholding this law is going to make it so
much worse. Today, us versus Ferguson is a pretty infamous
and notorious Supreme Court case, but at the time it
really did not make a lot of big news. The
reaction of a lot of the media and of the
majority as a whole was sort of well obviously um. Afterward, though,
(21:15):
states really did begin passing more and more segregation laws,
and in spite of the ruling being based on the
idea that things were separate but equal, a lot of
these separate facilities were not equal at all. They were
often massively and deliberately inferior that from the facilities for
white people, and a lot of people interpreted this ruling
to mean that all discrimination and everything was legal, not
(21:38):
just the separation of races into two separate but supposedly
equal facilities. And while most of these laws were passed
in the South, this was not exclusively a Southern phenomenon.
Of the segregation laws in the United States were in
the North, Midwest, and the West. And it also was
not just about segregating African Americans. In states with sizable
(21:59):
population of Asians, Mexicans, and Native Americans, for example, these
populations were segregated from the white population as well. Since
the Supreme Court had upheld the previous verdict. Homer Plessi
then appeared before Judge Ferguson in Louisiana one more time
on January eleven. This was to plead guilty and to
(22:20):
pay his fine for violating the separate car law. He
spent the rest of his life working as a laborer
and then a clerk, and then eventually he became an
insurance salesman for an African American owned insurance company. Homer
Plessi died on March one. It would be almost sixty
years before this decision was overturned, and we're going to
(22:41):
talk about that, uh in another episode, and then in
another episode after that, we're going to talk about what
happened after it was overturned. Thanks so much for joining
us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
the archive, if you heard an email address or a
Facebook U r L or something similar over the course
(23:03):
of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current
email address is History Podcast at I heart radio dot com.
Our old health stuff works email address no longer works,
and you can find us all over social media at
missed in History, and you can subscribe to our show
on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts. The i heart Radio app
(23:24):
and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you missed
in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Happy Saturday. One of our episodes coming up this week
includes a brief mention of the U. S. Supreme Court
decision Lessie Versus Ferguson, which upheld racial segregation as long
as the segregated facilities are equal. We're bringing our episode
on Lessie versus. Ferguson out of the archive to give
a little bit more context to that. And when this
(00:23):
episode originally came out, we followed up with two episodes
on Brown v Board which overturned this ruling. We mentioned
that those are coming at the top of the episode,
but since we have other classics lined up over the
next few weeks, just to be aware, we're not going
to be replaying those this time around, so don't don't
wait for those to show up in your feed, but
they still are in the archive if folks are interested.
(00:44):
This originally came out February Welcome to Stuff You Missed
in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and
I'm Fry. We are going to spend a few episodes
(01:08):
over the next few weeks talking about the two Supreme
Court cases that uh sort of in a way book
ended segregation in the United States, and plus E versus Ferguson,
the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was legal as long
as the separate facilities were equal, And then many years later,
(01:29):
Brown versus Board of Education overturned Plusy versus Ferguson and
found that school segregation was unconstitutional. That decision was such
a big deal and was so monumental and led to
such a huge backlash that we're actually going to split
that part of the conversation into two episodes later down
the road. So those two facts about plus E versus
(01:51):
Ferguson and Brown versus Board are things that most people
who have studied the civil rights movement or United States
history in any way are pretty familiar with. But I
think for me and for you, both both of us
and probably a lot of other people, the names of
the cases and what they did is the beginning and
(02:12):
the end of the conversation. Like, I had no idea
what the story was behind, how these cases came to be,
or any of that until I really got into researching
them for these episodes. So that's why we're going to
spend some time on this to talk about who the
people were involved in Plessy versus Ferguson and Brown versus Board,
and sort of the journey that these cases took to
come to the Supreme Court in the first place. So
(02:34):
the context that we're going to start with today is
actually the U. S. Civil War. There are people who
will argue that the Civil War was not fought over slavery,
that it was about states rights or economics. And while
states rights and economics were certainly involved, the primary rights
in question were the right to own slaves and the
right to travel freely with slaves into states where slavery
(02:56):
was illegal. The primary economic factor at issue, you was
that the Southern economy really relied on slavery in labor
intensive industries such as cotton farming. You could also make
the argument that the Civil War was fought over over
neither of those two things, That it was fought because
the North wanted to preserve the Union of the States,
(03:16):
but the South wanted to secede from that union. And
while strictly speaking this is also true, the big factor
that was driving states to succede, which was specifically cited
in the declarations of causes that were issued by Georgia, Mississippi,
South Carolina, and Texas was slavery. This is all relevant
because after the Union won the war in eighteen sixty five,
(03:38):
slavery was abolished in the places where it was still legal.
The federal government tried to rebuild the Southern infrastructure and
encourage racial equality in a period that became known as
the Reconstruction. Three amendments were added to the United States
Constitution as part of this effort. The thirteenth Amendment formally
abolished slavery, the fourteenth Amen meant granted citizenship to anyone
(04:01):
who was born in the United States or nationalized, which
included former slaves. And the fifteenth Amendment read, in part,
the right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States
or by any State, on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude. There was a lot more going
on during Reconstruction. All of the twists and turns could
(04:24):
easily be their own whole series of episodes. But to
make an extremely long story short, the South overall resented
the largely Northern pressure to free slaves and give them
the right to vote. This was especially true as black
officials were elected to office in the South and for
a brief period of time, some progress was made towards
rachel equality. As the Southern states were readmitted to the
(04:48):
Union and the federal government had less influence on how
those states were run, the states started passing laws that
restricted African Americans right to vote by basically taking an
advantage of the fact that most of them had been slaves,
and during their time as slaves, they had not been
allowed to learn to read or write, or to earn
money or to hold property. So new laws required that
(05:10):
in order to vote, people had to pass a literacy test,
or pay a poll tax, or own property, something that
in general white people in the South could do much
more easily than black people could. Some of these tests
were also virtually unpassable. But we're only required for black voters.
But their right to vote restricted, Black Americans lost many
(05:32):
of their prior gains in terms of representation in the government. Afterwards, states,
both Southern states and border states enacted segregation laws that
became known as Jim Crow laws, which separated black and
white citizens in everything from hospitals to water fountains. Just
the name Jim Crow was an insult. It came from
a heavily stereotypical character in minstrel shows. These laws were
(05:57):
enforced not just through the usual means of making arrests
and bringing people to trial, but also through a social
structure that insisted that black people be subservient to white people.
The laws were also enforced more directly through intimidation and violence,
up to and including murder. White supremacy organizations like the
Ku Klux Klan really flourished, and violence against black citizens
(06:20):
at the hand of white citizens became both commonplace and
rarely prosecuted. Before we get into talking about a Jim
Crow law and how it led to a Supreme Court
ruling that legalized segregation, do you want to have a
word from a sponsor? Sure stupendous? So to return to
(06:45):
the story of Plessy versus Ferguson. One example of these
Jim Crow laws was Louisiana's separate car law. And this
law was to quote promote the comfort of passengers on
their trains by providing quote equal at separate accommodations for
the white and colored races. So anyone who boarded a
car in Louisiana that was not meant for their race
(07:07):
could be fined or jailed. Interracial couples were not exempt
from the law, nor were black maids and servants who
were traveling with white employers. Really, the only exception was
nurses who were taking care of children of another race.
This was signed into law on July tenth. Thanks to
its sizable black population, including slaves, free slaves, and creoles
(07:32):
of color, and to the Union's presence in New Orleans
during much of the Civil War, New Orleans have become
home to a large population of affluent, politically active black citizens.
When the separate car Law was passed, activists in New
Orleans set to work immediately trying to put together a
plan to challenge it. On September one, eighteen, prominent black
(07:53):
and Creole New Orleans citizens formed the Citizens Committee to
test the constitutionality of the Separate Our Law, or the Committoyer.
They got legal help from a white lawyer named Albion W. Tourge.
He was from New York and had been an abolitionist.
Tourge waived his fees and he promised to argue the
case before the Supreme Court. Shouldn't make it all the
(08:14):
way there, since Tourge was both very busy and also
very far away from Louisiana. They also had the help
of a local lawyer named James C. Walker. The committee
settled on a strategy of civil disobedience. They would find
someone to break the separate car law and get arrested,
and then they would take the case through the court system.
(08:35):
This they hoped would lead to overturning segregation, not just
on Louisiana trains, but in all of the United States.
Then they started looking for volunteers who the law would
consider to be colored, but who looked white. Legal distinctions
about who was considered to be part of which race
really varied from state to state and through the years,
and as a general rule, particularly in the South, the
(08:58):
law required smaller and small our amounts of African American
ancestry to be considered colored, and eventually this came down
to the one drop rule, meaning that in a lot
of places, if a person had one drop of African blood,
that person was considered to be black. Candidates had to
be law abiding citizens with good reputations, people who would
(09:20):
not be dismissed as disreputable, and who had nothing in
their background that could be that could become an easy
excuse for not taking their case seriously. Their first attempt
to break the separate car law was made by a
man named Daniel did Dunes, and he was a musician.
He was also the son of one of the members
of the committee, and he was one eighth black. He
boarded the first class car of a train on February
(09:45):
and then he told the conductor that he was colored.
He was removed from the train and arrested, but before
the case could go to trial, the charges against him
were dismissed because the state Supreme Court ruled in a
different case that state segregation laws couldn't apply to interstate travel.
Day Dune's tickets had been to Mobile, Alabama, so per
(10:05):
the Louisiana Supreme Court, that ride was regulated by federal
law and not state law. The committee had actually chosen
an interstate ticket on purpose, because they were hoping to
draw on interstate commerce commerce laws in the case. The
committee tried again, and this time the man breaking the
law was Homer Plessy, a thirty year old shoemaker. He
(10:26):
was also one eighth African American. One of his great
grandmothers had been black, and he had skin light enough
that he would not be questioned boarding the car. He
bought his first class ticket to Covington, Louisiana on the
East Louisiana Railroad, so that the whole trip would take
place within the borders of the state. Nobody raised any
questions when plus He boarded the first class car, and
(10:48):
different accounts vary and exactly how the conductor came to
know that he was legally a colored man and in
the wrong place, and some of the versions Plus he
just told him, and in others the conductor asked because
he knew that the Committee was sending someone to test
the segregation law that day, and in others the conductor
asked everyone in the car because it was part of
(11:10):
his job to confirm the race of all passengers and
that everyone was in the correct car on the train.
Regardless of how it played out, and this information came
to light, the train's conductor, J. J. Dowling asked Homer
Plessy to leave the train after learning his race, and
even though the law designated separate but equal cars, there
(11:30):
was not actually a car for black passengers on the
train that day. Plus he refused, he was arrested by
a private detective hired by the committee and jailed. Members
of the Citizens Committee pulled their money to bail Plusy
out Plessy's trial was set for October thirteenth, eight two.
(11:51):
James Walker, who we mentioned earlier, argued that his arrest
violated the thirteenth and fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Previous
court rulings had expanded on the interpretation of the thirteenth
Amendment not just to include literal slavery, but also quote
badges of slavery and service ude, which is how an
amendment that was set up to abolish slavery was being
(12:13):
applied to the matter of being segregated on a train.
But Lionel Adams, the attorney for the prosecution, argued that
the Separate Car Act reduced racial tension and so it
was actually good for the state. He also argued that
because the separate cars were equal, it was not discriminatory
to separate people into them by their race, although we're
(12:33):
not clear on how that applied given that there was
reportedly no actual car for black passengers on that particular train.
Judge John H. Ferguson ruled in favor of the prosecution
on November eighteen, and the next step in the case
was the appeal. But again, we're gonna pause for a
second for a word from a sponsor before we dig
(12:53):
into all of that juicy material. So let's let's go
back to the story, which at this point is going
to go to the Supreme Court. Plus, his case went
to the Louisiana Supreme Court first, which heard it on
November of that year. The arguments were essentially the same
(13:16):
as what had been argued in the court before, and
in what came as a surprise to no one, the
court ruled that the law was not discriminatory because it
applied equally to everyone. It would actually be four years
before the case would get to the U. S. Supreme Corps, and,
as he had promised when originally agreeing to work with
the Citizens Committee, Albion Tourge planned to argue the case
(13:37):
before the Supreme Court rather than appealing immediately. He actually
decided to take some time to try to raise funds
for the case and work out his strategy. In addition
to that, he and the committee were also hoping that
by delaying a little bit, they would find themselves before
a court that would see their case more favorably. Based
on decisions that the court had already issued, Justices eight
(14:00):
two were really not very likely to find that the
separate car law was unconstitutional. The President was just not
running in favor of this case. So the committee crossed
their fingers that some of the justices would be replaced
before they submitted their own case, and in eight two
Supreme Court justices died and new appointees took their place. However,
(14:23):
this did not look much better for Plessy in the
Citizens Committee than the previous court had. One of the
new justices was a former Confederate soldier and the other
had a reputation for being quite conservative. The new court
also set an immediate precedent of upholding other Jim Crow laws. Plus,
in just those couple of years, the overall racial climate
(14:44):
in the United States had gotten worse instead of better. So,
in spite of the fact that things seemed to be
kind of running against them towards a submitted the case,
which he prepared along with Walker and Samuel F. Phillips,
and he submitted it four review towards the end of eighteen.
The Supreme Court heard the case, which was now known
as plus E versus Ferguson, in eight nine six. In
(15:07):
the written briefs and oral arguments, Tourge and team argued
that the separate car law was unconstitutional, in several ways,
including the following. This is very much an abridged list,
but first up, it violated the Fourteenth Amendment from several
different angles by giving white citizens and colored citizens different
(15:27):
rights and protections under the law. Second, while proponents of
the law claimed it was for the comfort of both
black and white passengers, Tourge argued that it was really
for the comfort of white passengers at the expense of
black passengers, and therefore discriminatory. Second, while proponents of the
law claimed that it was for the comfort of both
black and white passengers, Tourge argued that it was really
(15:50):
for the comfort of white passengers at the expense of
black passengers, and therefore discriminatory. He also argued that the
law violated the fourteenth of then meants due process clause
by giving train conductors the power of law enforcement while
giving train passengers no legal recourse about decisions the conductors made.
(16:11):
And last that it created conditions of subjection and inferiority,
which previous court decisions had interpreted to be in violation
of the Thirteenth Amendment. Representing Louisiana's side was Alexander Peter Morse,
whose legal specialty was federal appeals He argued that the
separate car law was designed to prevent problems and serve
(16:32):
the common good, so, rather than making African American passengers
second class citizens, according to him, it actually protected them
from harassment and discrimination by white passengers. He also noted
several prior cases in which the Supreme Court had had
upheld States rights in the matter of segregation, and he
said that the rights at issue in the separate car
(16:53):
law were not civil rights at all. They were social
rights which are not constitutionally protected. The Supreme Court announced
its decision on May eighteenth. Of eight, Justice David J.
Brewer excused himself from participating because his daughter had just died,
and the remaining eight judges upheld the constitutionality of the
(17:14):
separate car law in a seven to one ruling. Henry
Billings Brown wrote the majority opinion, which dismissed the idea
that the separate car law violated the Thirteenth Amendment entirely.
He also cited several cases in which the Court had
upheld States rights to segregate, and he dismissed the idea
that providing separate facilities was inherently discriminatory. This is the thing,
(17:38):
he wrote on that point, we consider the underlying fallacy
of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that
the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored
race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so,
it is not by reason of anything found in the Act,
but solely because the colored race chooses to put that
(17:59):
construct and upon it. So it goes on to say
that if quote, the colored race became the majority in
the state legislature and enacted the same law, that white
people would not think themselves inferior because of it. This
was the point where I had to stop reading Supreme
Court rulings and take a little break. That's probably for
(18:20):
the best in terms of your nual stability. There's a
lot that's really offensive in in the whole majority opinion,
and and the part where it's like this, you guys
are making a big deal out of it. This is
on you, not on us. That was the part that
made me like, uh, yes, I feel like they haven't
changed very much, because this feels like the stop playing
(18:41):
the race card of the late nineteenth century. So the
sole dissenter and all of this was John Marshall Harlan
who went against the majority with so much vigor that
he became known as the Great Dissenter. His dissent accurately
predicted what was going to happen next, which was the
States were going to you. Is this ruling as a
justification to enact a whole lot more segregation laws, uh,
(19:05):
and to be more blatantly districted, discriminatory, feeling like they
had the backing of the Supreme Court in doing so.
One of his statements goes like this quote, In my opinion,
the judgment this day rendered will in time proved to
be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this
tribunal in the dread Scott case. So if you're not
(19:25):
familiar with that one, that's dread Scott versus Sanford, when
dread Scott, who was a slave, sued for his freedom,
and the court decided that anyone with African ancestry, whether
they were a slave or free, was not intended to
be a citizen of the United States and therefore was
not entitled to bring such a suit in federal court.
The court also ruled that the federal government couldn't prohibit
(19:46):
slavery in territory that it had acquired after the United
States was founded. Harlan's dissent also argues strenuously against the
idea that segregation was good for race relations. To quote
s Exteam, millions of whites are in no danger from
the presence here of eight millions of blacks. The destinies
of the two races in this country are indissolubly linked together,
(20:09):
and the interests of both require that the common government
of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate
to be planted under the sanction of law. What can
more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and
perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races than state enactments,
which in fact proceed on the ground that colored citizens
(20:33):
are so far inferior and degraded that they cannot be
allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens. That,
as all will admit, is the real meaning of such
legislation as was enacted in Louisiana. Yeah, his whole tone
is basically, Uh, it's completely obvious to everyone that the
intent here is to subjugate an entire race of people,
(20:54):
and upholding this law is going to make it so
much worse. Today, us versus Ferguson is a pretty infamous
and notorious Supreme Court case, but at the time it
really did not make a lot of big news. The
reaction of a lot of the media and of the
majority as a whole was sort of well obviously um. Afterward, though,
(21:15):
states really did begin passing more and more segregation laws,
and in spite of the ruling being based on the
idea that things were separate but equal, a lot of
these separate facilities were not equal at all. They were
often massively and deliberately inferior that from the facilities for
white people, and a lot of people interpreted this ruling
to mean that all discrimination and everything was legal, not
(21:38):
just the separation of races into two separate but supposedly
equal facilities. And while most of these laws were passed
in the South, this was not exclusively a Southern phenomenon.
Of the segregation laws in the United States were in
the North, Midwest, and the West. And it also was
not just about segregating African Americans. In states with sizable
(21:59):
population of Asians, Mexicans, and Native Americans, for example, these
populations were segregated from the white population as well. Since
the Supreme Court had upheld the previous verdict. Homer Plessi
then appeared before Judge Ferguson in Louisiana one more time
on January eleven. This was to plead guilty and to
(22:20):
pay his fine for violating the separate car law. He
spent the rest of his life working as a laborer
and then a clerk, and then eventually he became an
insurance salesman for an African American owned insurance company. Homer
Plessi died on March one. It would be almost sixty
years before this decision was overturned, and we're going to
(22:41):
talk about that, uh in another episode, and then in
another episode after that, we're going to talk about what
happened after it was overturned. Thanks so much for joining
us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
the archive, if you heard an email address or a
Facebook U r L or something similar over the course
(23:03):
of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current
email address is History Podcast at I heart radio dot com.
Our old health stuff works email address no longer works,
and you can find us all over social media at
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