By 1896 segregation in railway cars was in effect in all Southern states. In an effort to test the constitutionally of Louisiana's segregation laws, Homer A. Plessy, who was only one-eighth Negro and could easily pass for white, sat in a white car after having made it known that be was a Negro. When be was asked to move to a Negro car Plessy refused. He was arrested and tried, and be appealed his conviction to the Louisiana Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court beard the case on a writ of error and, in a landmark decision, ruled that "separate but equal accommodations" were constitutional. The judgment sanctioned segregation in the South as well as the North for nearly sixty years.
This case turns upon the constitutionality of an act of the General Assembly of the state of Louisiana, passed in 1890, providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races. . . . The 1st Section of the statute enacts
The proper construction
of this amendment was first called to the attention of this court in the Slaughter-House
Cases . . . which involved, however, not a question of race but one of exclusive
privileges. The case did not call for any expression of opinion as to the exact
rights it was intended to secure to the colored race, but it was said generally
that its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the Negro; to give
definitions of citizenship of the United States and of the states, and to protect
from the hostile legislation of the states the privileges and immunities of
citizens of the United States as distinguished from those of citizens of the
states.
The object of the amendment
was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the
law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish
distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social as distinguished from political
equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.
Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation in places where they are
liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of
either race to the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized
as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their
police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment
of separate schools for white and colored children, which has been held to be
a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of states where the
political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced.
. . .
While we think the enforced
separation of the races, as applied to the internal commerce of the state, neither
abridges the privileges or immunities of the colored man, deprives him of his
property without due process of law, nor denies him the equal protection of
the laws, within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, we are not prepared
to say that the conductor, in assigning passengers to the coaches according
to their race, does not act at his peril, or that the provision of the 2nd Section
of the act, that denies to the passenger compensation in damages for a refusal
to receive him into the coach in which he properly belongs, is a valid exercise
of the legislative power. Indeed, we understand it to be conceded by the state's
attorney, that such part of the act as exempts from liability the railway company
and its officers is unconstitutional.
The power to assign to a particular coach obviously implies the power to determine
to which race the passenger belongs, as well as the power to determine who,
under the laws of the particular state, is to be deemed a white and who a colored
person. This question, though indicated in the brief of the plaintiff in error,
does not properly arise upon the record in this case, since the only issue made
is as to the unconstitutionality of the act, so far as it requires the railway
to provide separate accommodations and the conductor to assign passengers according
to their race.
It is claimed by the plaintiff in error that, in any mixed community,
the reputation of belonging to the dominant race, in this instance the white
race, is property, in the same sense that a right of action, or of inheritance,
is property. Conceding this to be so for the purposes of this case, we are unable
to see how this statute deprives him of, or in any way affects, his right to
such property. If he be a white man and assigned to a colored coach, he may
have his action for damages against the company for being deprived of his so-called
property. Upon the other hand, if he be a colored man and be so assigned, he
has been deprived of no property since he is not lawfully entitled to the reputation
of being a white man.
In this connection, it is
also suggested by the learned counsel for the plaintiff in error that the same
argument that will justify the state legislature in requiring railways to provide
separate accommodations for the two races will also authorize them to require
separate cars to be provided for people whose hair is of a certain color, or
who are aliens, or who belong to certain nationalities, or to enact laws requiring
colored people to walk upon one side of the street and white people upon the
other, or requiring white men's houses to be painted white and colored men's
black, or their vehicles or business signs to be of different colors, upon the
theory that one side of the street is as good as the other, or that a house
or vehicle of one color is as good as one of another color. The reply to all
this is that every exercise of the police power must be reasonable and extend
only to such laws as are enacted in good faith for the promotion for the public
good and not for the annoyance or oppression of a particular class. . . .
So far, then, as a conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment is concerned, the
case reduces itself to the question whether the statute of Louisiana is a reasonable
regulation, and with respect to this there must necessarily be a large discretion
on the part of the legislature. In determining the question of reasonableness,
it is at liberty to act with reference to the established usages, customs, and
traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort,
and the preservation of the public peace and good order. Gauged by this Standard,
we cannot say that a law which authorizes or even requires the separation of
the two races in public conveyances is unreasonable or more obnoxious to the
Fourteenth Amendment than the acts of Congress requiring separate schools for
colored children in the District of Columbia, the constitutionality of which
does not seem to have been questioned, or the corresponding acts of state legislatures.
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 construction
upon it. The argument necessarily assumes that if, as has been more than once
the case, and is not unlikely to be so again, the colored race should become
the dominant power in the state legislature and should enact a law in precisely
similar terms, it would thereby relegate the white race to an inferior position.
We imagine that the white race, at least, would not acquiesce in this assumption.
The argument also assumes
that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation and that equal rights
cannot be secured to the Negro except by an enforced commingling of the two
races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon
terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual
appreciation of each other's merits, and a voluntary consent of individuals.
As was said by the Court of Appeals of New York in People v Gallagher . . .
This end can neither be accomplished nor promoted by laws which conflict with
the general sentiment of the community upon whom they are designed to operate.
When the government, therefore, has secured to each of its citizens equal rights
before the law and equal opportunities for improvement and progress, it has
accomplished the end for which it was organized and performed all of the functions
respecting social advantages with which it is endowed.
Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions
based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in
accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political
rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or
politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution
of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.
It is true that the question of the proportion of colored blood necessary to
constitute a colored person as distinguished from a white person is one upon
which there is a difference of opinion in the different states, some holding
that any visible admixture of black blood stamps the person as belonging to
the colored race (State v. Chavers); others that it depends upon the preponderance
of blood (Gray V. State; Monroe v. Collins); and still others that the predominance
of white blood must only be in the proportion of three-fourths (People v. Dean,
14 Michigan, 406; Jones v. Commonwealth). But these are questions to be determined
under the laws of each state and are not properly put in issue in this case.
Under the allegations of his petition it may undoubtedly become a question of
importance whether, under the laws of Louisiana, the petitioner belongs to the
white or colored race. ..
The judgment of the court below is, therefore, Affirmed.
[See Also Justice Harlan's Dissent in a separate file]