Plessy v. Ferguson is one of those landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases we would like to forget. Put it behind us. Consider it ancient history from the 19th century.
Not so fast.
We have something to learn from Plessy v. Ferguson today, 130 years after the ruling.
Background
To refresh your memory from history or political science class, Homer Plessy was a man of mixed race. That meant, under the law in the United States, he was considered Black. Though reportedly seven-eighths white, he was not permitted to ride in a “whites-only” railroad car in New Orleans. The Louisiana State Legislature had passed a Separate Car Act in 1890. That law required separation train cars for white and Black passengers.
In 1891, a group of Black men in New Orleans formed “Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law.” Bolstered by a May 15, 1892 ruling by the Louisiana State Supreme Court in favor of the Pullman Company, the Committee decided to test the law in interstate travel. On June 7, 1892, Mr. Plessy purposely took a seat in a whites-only rail car on the East Louisiana Railroad to test the law.
What happened to Mr. Plessy
Mr. Plessy was arrested for boarding a “whites-only” train car. His defenders in court argued that the Separate Car Act of 1890 violated the 13th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
to the U.S. Constitution
When Mr. Plessy’s case went to District Court, the judge was John H. Ferguson. Judge Ferguson denied a request to dismiss the case and then ruled that the Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890 was constitutional because the State had the authority to regular public accommodations.
The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision, and Mr. Plessy took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Surely, that august body would see that the Louisiana law was unjust, discriminatory, and unconstitutional.
After all, the 13th Amendment had abolished slavery in the United States in 1865, and Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1866, not only extended citizenship to former slaves but also state, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Mr. Plessy and his lawyers maintained that the Separate Car Act on 1890 was unconstitutional under the last phrase in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment.
to the U.S. Constitution
The ruling
In a 7-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on May 18, 1896, that the State law in Louisiana was constitutional because it provided “separation but equal” accommodations for white and Black passengers.
That famous “separate but equal” wording is what took the United States down a terrible road of discrimination for the next 70 years.
It paved the way for “Jim Crow” laws. It made racial segregation in public education, in public conveyances, restaurants, lodging, etc. lawful.
The “separate but equal” doctrine stood until the Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court case in 1954 and the Civil Rights Acts in the 1960s. (The Brown v. Board of Education ruling, ironically, was handed done in a 9-0 decision on May 17, 1954, just one day shy of the anniversary of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision.)
We all know now that “separate but equal” was never equal; it was just separate. That doctrine became the umbrella and shield for untold acts of discrimination and violence until the late 1960s.
Who cast the dissenting vote?
Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter in the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling. Although he came from a slave-holding family in Kentucky, Justice Harlan often cast the dissenting vote in civil rights cases that went before the U.S. Supreme Court. He sat on the Court from 1877 until 1911.
Lessons to be learned from Plessy v. Ferguson in 2026
If I had penned this blog post a couple of years ago, it probably would have ended there. Just a nice little history lesson. Just the facts of the case and the final ruling.
But I’m writing this in mid-May 2026, and that 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case has taken on a whole new significance.
As in 1896, in 2026 we have a U.S. Supreme Court majority who tend to be constitutional textualists or literalists, meaning they usually view the Constitution and laws as the people at the time of a law’s enactment would have interpreted it and not necessarily taking into account the spirit of the law.
In my six years of studying political science in college, I was taught to study the time and letter of the law but to look for the spirit of the law.
I offer a current example of how some people now want to interpret the 14th Amendment as applying only to the people who had been slaves prior to and during the American Civil War. They argue that the 14th Amendment does not grant citizenship to everyone who just happens to be born in the United States. They don’t want the 14th Amendment to apply to the children of undocumented immigrants. Trust me. We have not heard the last of that argument.
Just a couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court essentially dismantled the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As a result, state legislators are falling all over each other to redraw Congressional District boundaries. They feel emboldened to eliminate majority Black or Democrat districts before this November’s mid-term elections.
This is history repeating itself. The hurried gerrymandering and shifting of Congression District lines in 2026 is in many ways a mirror image of the Jim Crow laws of the late 1800s.
Why is it that we don’t learn from history? Or perhaps a more accurate question is “Why do we only learn how to repeat the harmful things from our history?”
The Roberts court is taking us down a road of easier corruption in politics (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 2010), less accountability for the U.S. President (Trump v. United States, 2024), and an attempted erasure of all the progress our country made in racial relations and equality in the 60 years following the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Louisiana v. Callais, April 29, 2026).
The racial discrimination the U.S. Supreme Court is fomenting by its Louisiana v. Callais decision a couple of weeks ago is far-reaching and should send chills done the spine of every American.
The lesson for us to learn from the last 16 years of U.S. Supreme court decisions, un-checked Presidential powers, and a U.S. Congress that acts more like a lap dog than a co-equal branch of the federal government is that our rights and the “guarantees” we have in our laws and U.S. Constitution are no more secure than the paper they are written on.
Every week I learn that more protected federal lands set aside generations ago for wildlife and the preservation of the natural world are being trashed by our own elected officials. It’s being done quietly, of course, because they don’t want us to know. If they were proud of what they’re doing, they’d be making grand announcements.
I assumed the East Wing of the White House would be there forever. I assumed national parks and wildlife refuges were permanently protected.
The U.S. Constitution is a living and breathing document. It will always be up for discussion, debate, and amending. That’s the beauty of it, but it also makes it fragile and vulnerable to the whims of Presidents and others who wish to test it.
Democracy is more fragile than I realized.
Janet
The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.
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