February 16, 2015 • 24 mins
The ruling in this infamous U.S. Supreme Court case stated that segregation was legal as long as the separate facilities were equal. But most people are more familiar with the name of the case than with the actual events that transpired around it.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuffy Missed in History Class from dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Trac c V Wilson
and I'm Holly Frying. We are going to spend a
few episodes over the next few weeks talking about the
two Supreme Court cases that, uh sort of in a way,
(00:25):
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, Round versus Board of Education overturned Plus
versus Ferguson and found that school segregation was unconstitutional. That
(00:46):
decision was such a big deal and was so monumental
and led to such a huge backlash. They were actually
going to split that part of the conversation into two
episodes later down the road. So those two facts about
Plessy versus. Ferguson and Brown versus Board are things that
most people who have studied the Civil rights movement or
(01:07):
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 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
(01:29):
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 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
(01:51):
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 questions in were the
right to own slaves and the right to travel freely
with slaves into states where slavery was illegal. The primary
economic factor at issue was that the Southern economy really
(02:12):
relied on slavery in labor intensive industries such as cotton farming.
You could also make the argument that the Civil War
was fought, oh the b over neither of those two things.
That it was spought because the North wanted to preserve
the Union of the States, but the South wanted to
succede from that union. And while strictly speaking this is
also true, the big factor that was driving states to succeed,
(02:35):
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, 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
(02:57):
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
Amendment granted citizenship to anyone 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
(03:19):
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 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
(03:44):
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 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
(04:07):
by basically taking 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 in order to vote, people had to
pass a literacy test, or pay up poll tax, or
own property, something that in general, white people in the
(04:29):
South could do much more easily than black people could.
Some of these tests were also virtually unpassable, but were
only required for black voters, but their right to vote restricted,
Black Americans lost many 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
(04:52):
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 enforced not just
through the usual means of making arrests and bringing people
to trial, but also through a social structure that insisted
(05:15):
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 at
the hand of white citizens became both commonplace and rarely prosecuted.
(05:36):
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 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
(05:59):
by provide quote equal but separate accommodations for the white
and colored races. So anyone who boarded a car in
Louisiana that was not meant for their race 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
(06:21):
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 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
(06:45):
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 and Creole New Orleans
citizens formed the Citizens Committee to test the constitutionality of
the Separate Car Law, or the Committoya. They got legal
(07:05):
help from a white lawyer named Albion W. Tourge he
was from New York and had been an abolitionist. Toorgey
waved his fees and he promised to argue the case
before the Supreme Court. Shouldn't make it all the way there,
since torge 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
(07:27):
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. 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
(07:51):
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 law
of quired smaller and smaller 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
(08:14):
person was considered to be black. Candidates had to be
law abiding citizens with good reputations, people who would 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 attempts to
break the separate car law was made by a man
(08:34):
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 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
(08:55):
dismissed because the state Supreme Court ruled in a different
case that state segregation laws couldn't apply to interstate travel.
Dating's tickets had been to Mobile, Alabama, so per 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
(09:16):
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 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
(09:39):
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 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
(10:02):
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 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
(10:25):
leave the train after learning his race, and even though
the law designated separate but equal cars, there 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
(10:48):
was set for October thirteenth, eighteen two. 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
(11:09):
and service ude, which is how an amendment that was
set up to abolish slavery was being 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
(11:32):
into them by their race, although we're 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 the eighteen,
and the next step in the case was the appeal.
But again, we're gonna pause for a second for a
(11:53):
word from a sponsor before we dig into all of
that juicy material. So let's let's get back to the story,
which at the point is going to go to the
Supreme Court. Plus He's case went to the Louisiana Supreme
Court first, which heard it on November the twenty two
of that year. The arguments were essentially the same as
what had been argued in the court before, and in
what came as a surprise to no one, the court
(12:16):
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 before the Supreme Court rather than appealing immediately. He
actually decided to take some time to try to raise
(12:37):
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
in two were really not very likely to find that
the separate car law was on the constitution all. The
(13:00):
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 eighteen two Supreme Court justices died and new
appointees took their place. However, this did not look much
better for Plessy in the Citizens Committee than the previous
(13:21):
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 in the United
States had gotten worse instead of better. So, in spite
(13:43):
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 the Supreme
Court heard the case, which was now known as Plessy
versus Ferguson in eighteen ninety six. In the written briefs
and oral arguments, Tourge and team argued that the separate
(14:05):
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 the colored citizens different rights and
protections under the law. Second, while proponents of the law
(14:25):
claimed that it was for the comfort of both black
and white passengers towards they argued that it was really
for the comfort of white passengers at the expense of
black passengers, and therefore discriminatory. He also argued that the
law violated the Fourteenth Amendment to do process clause by
giving train conductors the power of law enforcement while giving
(14:45):
trained passengers no legal recourse about decisions the conductors made.
And last that it created conditions of subjection and inferiority,
which previous court decisions had interpreted to be in violation
of the Amendment. Representing Louisiana's side was Alexander Peter Morse,
whose legal specialty was federal appeals. He argued that the
(15:09):
separate car law was designed to prevent problems and serve
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
(15:31):
said that the rights that issue in the separate car
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,
(15:51):
and the remaining eight judges upheld the constitutionality of the
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
(16:14):
that providing separate facilities was inherently discriminatory. This is the
thing 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,
(16:36):
but solely because the colored race chooses to put that
construction 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
(16:57):
rulings and take a little break. That's probably for the
best in terms of your usual 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,
I feel like they haven't changed very much, because this
(17:20):
feels like the stop playing the race card of the
late ninetiesh injury. 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 use
this ruling as a justification to enact a whole lot
(17:43):
more segregation laws, uh and to be more blatantly districted, discriminatory,
feeling like they had the backing of the Supreme Court
in doing so. One of his statements like this quote,
In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will in
time proved to be quite as print as the decision
made by this tribunal in the dread Scott case. So
(18:04):
if you're not 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
(18:25):
government couldn't prohibit slavery in territory that it had acquired
after the United States was founded. Harlan's descent also argued
strenuously against the idea that segregation was good for race relations.
To quote, sixty 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
(18:48):
linked together, 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
(19:11):
that colored citizens 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
(19:33):
race of people and upholding this law is going to
make it so much worse today. Plessy 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 Afterwards, though, states really did begin passing
(19:57):
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 just the separation of races
(20:20):
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 populations of Asians, Mexicans, and Native Americans,
(20:42):
for example, these populations were segregated from the white population
as well since the Supreme Court had upheld the previous verdict.
Homer Plessy then appeared before Judge Ferguson in Louisiana one
more time until on January eleven. This was to lead
guilty and to pay his fine for violating the separate
car law. He spent the rest of his life working
(21:05):
as a laborer and then a clerk, and then eventually
he became an insurance salesman for an African American owned
insurance company, Homer Plus. He died on March one. It
would be almost sixty years before this decision was overturned,
and we're going to talk about that, uh in another episode,
and then in another episode after that, we're going to
(21:26):
talk about what happened after it was overturned. And I'm
going to change courses completely to talk about some listener mail.
So this listener mail is from Neely, and Neely says, Hello,
Holly and Tracy. I love the podcast and have wanted
an excuse to be able to write and include picks
of my fur babies. I lived an Anchorage for two
(21:47):
point five years and my husband was born and raised
in Homer, Alaska. His grandma homesteaded there and Fairbanks and
likes to tell everyone she voted against becoming a state.
I wanted to give you a quick correction on the
start of the Ida Rod. The ceremonial start as an
anchorage during for Rondie, but this is just the mushers
coming through town to being announced. The actual race start
(22:08):
is in Willow, Alaska. This is a common fact misquoted
when the race is discussed. I also wanted to give
you a few other fun facts. When you mentioned that
you felt sorry for the musher who only had a
fifty degree hut to warm in, I assure you it
probably felt like a sauna. I remember a two week
spell and anchorage when it didn't get above negative ten.
One morning, I was walking to my car in my
(22:28):
warmest gear and had to change into a light place
because it was just much too warm. I got to
my car to see that much too warm was four degrees.
It was really all relative. Also google for Rondie. That
is a hilariously Alaska event that includes not only the
ceremonial race start, but fur ball, snowshoe football, and the
(22:49):
running of the reindeer. Think running of the bulls. Only
reindeer are pretty chilled, so they kind of just wander
behind wondering what those crazy humans are doing. Another random
non fact from my Alaska native from from Nome. You
may want to fact checked. The town is named Nome
because on a census report that asked for the name,
it was written none because it was too small for
a name. It was misreads Nome, and thus Gnome is
(23:12):
Gnome uh And then Neely sent some episode suggestions. I
did find that Gnome fact in a couple of places,
but the reason it didn't make it into the episode
is that I similarly had a hard time substantiating whether
that was actually true. But the reason that I wanted
to read this email is that, not very long after
(23:32):
the Gnome Serium Run podcast aired, I had the experience
of having to take a fifteen minute walk in a
twenty degree below zero windshill and I went from that
twenty or fifteen however many minutes, some minutes not that long,
actually into an apartment that was seventy two degrees and
(23:53):
I was immediately sweltering, And my absolute first thought was, yet, yeah,
fifty degrees, that was fine. That guy on this serre
run So if you would like to write to us
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at how stuff works dot com. Our Facebook is Facebook
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(24:15):
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spreadshirt store at ms in history dot spreadshirt dot com
where you can find shirts and other cool stuff. If
you would like to learn more about what we've talked
about today, come to our parent company's website, which is
how stuff Works dot com and put the word let's
(24:36):
see in the search bar, and you will find an
article called ten Overturned Supreme Court Cases which talks about
this one in addition to nine others. You can also
come to our website, which is missed in History dot
com to see an archive of every episode we have
ever done, show notes for every episode Holly and I
have ever done, along with some other nice goodies, so
(24:57):
you can do all that
Welcome to Stuffy Missed in History Class from dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Trac c V Wilson
and I'm Holly Frying. We are going to spend a
few episodes over the next few weeks talking about the
two Supreme Court cases that, uh sort of in a way,
(00:25):
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, Round versus Board of Education overturned Plus
versus Ferguson and found that school segregation was unconstitutional. That
(00:46):
decision was such a big deal and was so monumental
and led to such a huge backlash. They were actually
going to split that part of the conversation into two
episodes later down the road. So those two facts about
Plessy versus. Ferguson and Brown versus Board are things that
most people who have studied the Civil rights movement or
(01:07):
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 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
(01:29):
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 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
(01:51):
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 questions in were the
right to own slaves and the right to travel freely
with slaves into states where slavery was illegal. The primary
economic factor at issue was that the Southern economy really
(02:12):
relied on slavery in labor intensive industries such as cotton farming.
You could also make the argument that the Civil War
was fought, oh the b over neither of those two things.
That it was spought because the North wanted to preserve
the Union of the States, but the South wanted to
succede from that union. And while strictly speaking this is
also true, the big factor that was driving states to succeed,
(02:35):
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, 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
(02:57):
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
Amendment granted citizenship to anyone 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
(03:19):
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 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
(03:44):
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 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
(04:07):
by basically taking 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 in order to vote, people had to
pass a literacy test, or pay up poll tax, or
own property, something that in general, white people in the
(04:29):
South could do much more easily than black people could.
Some of these tests were also virtually unpassable, but were
only required for black voters, but their right to vote restricted,
Black Americans lost many 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
(04:52):
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 enforced not just
through the usual means of making arrests and bringing people
to trial, but also through a social structure that insisted
(05:15):
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 at
the hand of white citizens became both commonplace and rarely prosecuted.
(05:36):
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 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
(05:59):
by provide quote equal but separate accommodations for the white
and colored races. So anyone who boarded a car in
Louisiana that was not meant for their race 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
(06:21):
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 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
(06:45):
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 and Creole New Orleans
citizens formed the Citizens Committee to test the constitutionality of
the Separate Car Law, or the Committoya. They got legal
(07:05):
help from a white lawyer named Albion W. Tourge he
was from New York and had been an abolitionist. Toorgey
waved his fees and he promised to argue the case
before the Supreme Court. Shouldn't make it all the way there,
since torge 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
(07:27):
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. 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
(07:51):
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 law
of quired smaller and smaller 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
(08:14):
person was considered to be black. Candidates had to be
law abiding citizens with good reputations, people who would 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 attempts to
break the separate car law was made by a man
(08:34):
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 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
(08:55):
dismissed because the state Supreme Court ruled in a different
case that state segregation laws couldn't apply to interstate travel.
Dating's tickets had been to Mobile, Alabama, so per 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
(09:16):
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 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
(09:39):
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 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
(10:02):
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 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
(10:25):
leave the train after learning his race, and even though
the law designated separate but equal cars, there 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
(10:48):
was set for October thirteenth, eighteen two. 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
(11:09):
and service ude, which is how an amendment that was
set up to abolish slavery was being 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
(11:32):
into them by their race, although we're 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 the eighteen,
and the next step in the case was the appeal.
But again, we're gonna pause for a second for a
(11:53):
word from a sponsor before we dig into all of
that juicy material. So let's let's get back to the story,
which at the point is going to go to the
Supreme Court. Plus He's case went to the Louisiana Supreme
Court first, which heard it on November the twenty two
of that year. The arguments were essentially the same as
what had been argued in the court before, and in
what came as a surprise to no one, the court
(12:16):
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 before the Supreme Court rather than appealing immediately. He
actually decided to take some time to try to raise
(12:37):
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
in two were really not very likely to find that
the separate car law was on the constitution all. The
(13:00):
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 eighteen two Supreme Court justices died and new
appointees took their place. However, this did not look much
better for Plessy in the Citizens Committee than the previous
(13:21):
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 in the United
States had gotten worse instead of better. So, in spite
(13:43):
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 the Supreme
Court heard the case, which was now known as Plessy
versus Ferguson in eighteen ninety six. In the written briefs
and oral arguments, Tourge and team argued that the separate
(14:05):
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 the colored citizens different rights and
protections under the law. Second, while proponents of the law
(14:25):
claimed that it was for the comfort of both black
and white passengers towards they argued that it was really
for the comfort of white passengers at the expense of
black passengers, and therefore discriminatory. He also argued that the
law violated the Fourteenth Amendment to do process clause by
giving train conductors the power of law enforcement while giving
(14:45):
trained passengers no legal recourse about decisions the conductors made.
And last that it created conditions of subjection and inferiority,
which previous court decisions had interpreted to be in violation
of the Amendment. Representing Louisiana's side was Alexander Peter Morse,
whose legal specialty was federal appeals. He argued that the
(15:09):
separate car law was designed to prevent problems and serve
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
(15:31):
said that the rights that issue in the separate car
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,
(15:51):
and the remaining eight judges upheld the constitutionality of the
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
(16:14):
that providing separate facilities was inherently discriminatory. This is the
thing 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,
(16:36):
but solely because the colored race chooses to put that
construction 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
(16:57):
rulings and take a little break. That's probably for the
best in terms of your usual 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,
I feel like they haven't changed very much, because this
(17:20):
feels like the stop playing the race card of the
late ninetiesh injury. 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 use
this ruling as a justification to enact a whole lot
(17:43):
more segregation laws, uh and to be more blatantly districted, discriminatory,
feeling like they had the backing of the Supreme Court
in doing so. One of his statements like this quote,
In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will in
time proved to be quite as print as the decision
made by this tribunal in the dread Scott case. So
(18:04):
if you're not 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
(18:25):
government couldn't prohibit slavery in territory that it had acquired
after the United States was founded. Harlan's descent also argued
strenuously against the idea that segregation was good for race relations.
To quote, sixty 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
(18:48):
linked together, 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
(19:11):
that colored citizens 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
(19:33):
race of people and upholding this law is going to
make it so much worse today. Plessy 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 Afterwards, though, states really did begin passing
(19:57):
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 just the separation of races
(20:20):
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 populations of Asians, Mexicans, and Native Americans,
(20:42):
for example, these populations were segregated from the white population
as well since the Supreme Court had upheld the previous verdict.
Homer Plessy then appeared before Judge Ferguson in Louisiana one
more time until on January eleven. This was to lead
guilty and to pay his fine for violating the separate
car law. He spent the rest of his life working
(21:05):
as a laborer and then a clerk, and then eventually
he became an insurance salesman for an African American owned
insurance company, Homer Plus. He died on March one. It
would be almost sixty years before this decision was overturned,
and we're going to talk about that, uh in another episode,
and then in another episode after that, we're going to
(21:26):
talk about what happened after it was overturned. And I'm
going to change courses completely to talk about some listener mail.
So this listener mail is from Neely, and Neely says, Hello,
Holly and Tracy. I love the podcast and have wanted
an excuse to be able to write and include picks
of my fur babies. I lived an Anchorage for two
(21:47):
point five years and my husband was born and raised
in Homer, Alaska. His grandma homesteaded there and Fairbanks and
likes to tell everyone she voted against becoming a state.
I wanted to give you a quick correction on the
start of the Ida Rod. The ceremonial start as an
anchorage during for Rondie, but this is just the mushers
coming through town to being announced. The actual race start
(22:08):
is in Willow, Alaska. This is a common fact misquoted
when the race is discussed. I also wanted to give
you a few other fun facts. When you mentioned that
you felt sorry for the musher who only had a
fifty degree hut to warm in, I assure you it
probably felt like a sauna. I remember a two week
spell and anchorage when it didn't get above negative ten.
One morning, I was walking to my car in my
(22:28):
warmest gear and had to change into a light place
because it was just much too warm. I got to
my car to see that much too warm was four degrees.
It was really all relative. Also google for Rondie. That
is a hilariously Alaska event that includes not only the
ceremonial race start, but fur ball, snowshoe football, and the
(22:49):
running of the reindeer. Think running of the bulls. Only
reindeer are pretty chilled, so they kind of just wander
behind wondering what those crazy humans are doing. Another random
non fact from my Alaska native from from Nome. You
may want to fact checked. The town is named Nome
because on a census report that asked for the name,
it was written none because it was too small for
a name. It was misreads Nome, and thus Gnome is
(23:12):
Gnome uh And then Neely sent some episode suggestions. I
did find that Gnome fact in a couple of places,
but the reason it didn't make it into the episode
is that I similarly had a hard time substantiating whether
that was actually true. But the reason that I wanted
to read this email is that, not very long after
(23:32):
the Gnome Serium Run podcast aired, I had the experience
of having to take a fifteen minute walk in a
twenty degree below zero windshill and I went from that
twenty or fifteen however many minutes, some minutes not that long,
actually into an apartment that was seventy two degrees and
(23:53):
I was immediately sweltering, And my absolute first thought was, yet, yeah,
fifty degrees, that was fine. That guy on this serre
run So if you would like to write to us
about this or any other episode, where at History podcast
at how stuff works dot com. Our Facebook is Facebook
dot com plus missed in History, and our Twitter is
miss in History. Are Tumbler is miss and History dot
(24:15):
tumbler dot com, and are also on interest at pinterest
dot com slash missed in History. We also have a
spreadshirt store at ms in history dot spreadshirt dot com
where you can find shirts and other cool stuff. If
you would like to learn more about what we've talked
about today, come to our parent company's website, which is
how stuff Works dot com and put the word let's
(24:36):
see in the search bar, and you will find an
article called ten Overturned Supreme Court Cases which talks about
this one in addition to nine others. You can also
come to our website, which is missed in History dot
com to see an archive of every episode we have
ever done, show notes for every episode Holly and I
have ever done, along with some other nice goodies, so
(24:57):
you can do all that
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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