Plessy V. Ferguson (1896) Separate Term Paper

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We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet on terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities" (Pilgrim 2000).

Justice Henry Brown ruled that the Separate Car Act did "not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment...A statue which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races…the object of the Fourteenth 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" (Cozzens 1995). This notion of separation of the races would be perpetuated in Southern legislation, separating whites from blacks in restaurants, theaters, restrooms, and public schools, until the deleterious effects of so-called morally neutral separate but equal legislation were detailed in its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, under the Warren Court.

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Finally, the Brown decision effectively overturned the Plessy decision by stating that 'separation' implied inequality, in the manner in which the legal doctrine was enforced.

Only one justice dissented in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision: Justice John Harlan. The prescient Harlan wrote: "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before law...In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case" (Cozzens 1995).

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