Resources & Links
- Plessy v. Ferguson: HistoryPlessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine.
- Plessy v. Ferguson: BritannicaPlessy v. Ferguson, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 18, 1896, by a seven-to-one majority (one justice did not participate), advanced the controversial “separate but equal” doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws.
- Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)Later overruled by Brown v. Board of Education (1954), this decision embraced the now-discredited idea that “separate but equal” treatment for whites and African-Americans is permissible under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Archives, Research & Reference
- Document for May 18th: Plessy v. FergusonIssued on May 18, 1896, the ruling in this Supreme Court case upheld a Louisiana state law that allowed for "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races." It was not until the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas and congressional civil rights acts of the 1950s and 1960s that systematic segregation under state law was ended.
- Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): Our DocumentsThe ruling in this Supreme Court case upheld a Louisiana state law that allowed for "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races."
- Plessy v. Ferguson: CredoA Credo Reference landing page on Plessy v. Ferguson. This page includes links to reference works, journal articles, and a mind map.
Plessy Vs Ferguson
The decision that gave legal justification to segregation, invoking the concept of "separate but equal."
Source: Kanopy
Perspectives
We As Freemen
Essential reading on segregation. In June 1892, a thirty-year-old shoemaker named Homer Plessy bought a first-class railway ticket from his native New Orleans to Covington, north of Lake Pontchartrain. The two-hour trip had hardly begun when Plessy was arrested and removed from the train. Though Homer Plessy was born a free man of color and enjoyed relative equality while growing up in Reconstruction-era New Orleans, by 1890 he could no longer ride in the same carriage with white passengers. Plessy's act of civil disobedience was designed to test the constitutionality of the Separate Car Act, one of the many Jim Crow laws that threatened the freedoms gained by blacks after the Civil War. This largely forgotten case mandated separate-but-equal treatment and established segregation as the law of the land. It would be fifty-eight years before this ruling was reversed by Brown v. Board of Education. Keith Weldon Medley brings to life the players in this landmark trial, from the crusading black columnist Rodolphe Desdunes and the other members of the Comité des Citoyens to Albion W. Tourgee, the outspoken writer who represented Plessy, to John Ferguson, a reformist carpetbagger who nonetheless felt that he had to judge Plessy guilty.
Right to Ride
Through a reexamination of the earliest struggles against Jim Crow, Blair Kelley exposes the fullness of African American efforts to resist the passage of segregation laws dividing trains and streetcars by race in the early Jim Crow era. Right to Ride chronicles the litigation and local organizing against segregated rails that led to the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 and the streetcar boycott movement waged in twenty-five southern cities from 1900 to 1907. Kelley tells the stories of the brave but little-known men and women who faced down the violence of lynching and urban race riots to contest segregation. Focusing on three key cities--New Orleans, Richmond, and Savannah--Kelley explores the community organizations that bound protestors together and the divisions of class, gender, and ambition that sometimes drove them apart. The book forces a reassessment of the timelines of the black freedom struggle, revealing that a period once dismissed as the age of accommodation should in fact be characterized as part of a history of protest and resistance.
Plessy v Ferguson and Segregation: Crash Course Black American History #21
The United States' Constitution is not a very detailed document. It lays out the basic structure of government, and the details are filled in with legislation, and clarified and reinforced by court decisions. One of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions was the 1896 case of Plessy v Ferguson, which set the precedent that segregating people by race was acceptable. This meant that every public accommodation had the right to refuse to serve Black Americans, and that even public institutions like schools could be segregated. While the decision did stipulate that the segregated accommodations be "separate but equal," the equal part of that equation was often left out.
Source: YouTube