- [Narrator] After the Civil War,
the United States embarked on an era of reconstruction
during which the country grappled
with the painful history of slavery.
The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution
sought to eradicate the taint of slavery by outlawing it,
and guaranteeing black citizens equal treatment
under the law and the right to vote.
However, there was a lot of resistance to racial equality,
particularly in the south.
By the 1870s reconstruction had fizzled out
giving way to the Jim Crow era.
Named after the minstrel show Jump Jim Crow,
this period was defined by racial segregation laws
passed by southern states.
Plessy versus Ferguson is the now infamous case
in which the United States Supreme Court
declared it constitutional for races to be kept separate.
In 1892 Homer Plessy took a trip.
He bought a first class ticket, got onto the trian,
and settled in one of the coaches.
The conductor told Plessy to move to a different coach,
but he refused.
So Plessy was thrown off the train and into a jail cell.
Under an 1890 state law railways within Louisiana
were required to have "equal but separate"
coaches for black and white passengers.
Anyone refusing to sit in the assigned coach
could be fined $25 or imprisoned for up to 20 days.
As a U.S. citizen who was 7/8 white and 1/8 black,
Plessy argued that he was white and deserved to sit
in the coach reserved for white passengers.
However, under Louisiana law Plessy was considered black.
So Plessy was put on trial in state court
for breaking the law by sitting in the wrong coach.
At trial Plessy argued that the law was unconstitutional,
but the government disagreed.
Judge Ferguson sided with the government.
If convicted Plessy would be sentenced to prison
and charged a fine.
Plessy asked the Louisiana Supreme Court
to issue a writ of prohibition against Judge Ferguson
to prevent him from enforcing the law.
But the Louisiana Supreme Court
found the law constitutional.
So Plessy asked for writ of error
from the United States Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the case
to determine whether Louisiana law requiring
racially segregated railway coaches was constitutional.
Writing for the majority Justice Brown concluded
that the law didn't violate the 14th Amendment.
The Amendment was designed to make everyone equal
under the law, but it wasn't intended to eliminate
distinctions based on race.
The majority thought that political equality
of the races wasn't compromised by segregation.
State laws creating racially segregated facilities
thus didn't violate the equal protection clause
if those facilities were "separate but equal."
Laws requiring segregation could be legitimate
exercises of state police power
provided they were reasonable and based on good faith
rather than racist motives.
Here, Louisiana was simply respecting the fact
that the two races preferred remaining segregated.
In other words, it wasn't the laws job,
or even within the laws power to force the races to mix.
The court also found that the 13th Amendment,
which Plessy argued was violated by the Louisiana law,
was a non-issue because the case had nothing to do
with abolishing slavery or involuntary servitude.
Therefore, the court affirmed
the Louisiana Supreme Court's decision.
In a powerful dissent Justice Harlan found
that the Louisiana law was discriminatory,
because it sought to keep black passengers
from coaches reserved for white passengers.
Harlan stated that the law was clearly intended
to keep black people away from white people.
This was a violation of civil rights.
Harlan said the Constitution is color-blind,
and a state couldn't constitutionally deprive citizens
of their rights based on their races.
For Justice Harlan the majorities decision
was like the Supreme Court's infamous self-inflicted wound
in Dred Scott versus Sandford.
Harlan thought Plessy would foster animosity,
and basically predicted that it would be overturned.
Harlan would have found the Louisiana law unconstitutional.
It's worth noting, however, that as progressive
as Justice Harlan's views were,
he didn't believe in equal rights for all mankind.
His dissent distinguished Chinese people,
and he didn't quibble with the exclusion
of the Chinese race from citizenship.
The Supreme Court's decision in Plessy versus Ferguson
justified racial discrimination in the United States
based on the separate but equal doctrine.
In 1954, Plessy was finally overturned
by Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka.