The white race considers itself the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, achievement, education, wealth and power. So, I have no doubt, it will remain so forever if it remains true to its great heritage and adheres to the principles of constitutional freedom. But given the constitution, in the eyes of the law, there is no upper, dominant and ruling class of citizens in this country. There is no caste here. Our constitution is colorblind and does not know or tolerate classes among citizens. In terms of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the mightiest. The law considers man as a human being and has no regard for his environment or the color of his skin when it comes to his civil rights, as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land.
It is therefore regrettable that this High Court, the last interpreter of the Basic Law of the land, has concluded that it is competent for a State to regulate the enjoyment of civil rights by citizens solely on the basis of race. Homer Adolph Plessy, who agreed to be the plaintiff in the case to test the constitutionality of the law, was Metis; He described himself as “seven-eighths of Caucasian blood and one-eighth of African blood.” The result of this whole case is that, although this court has repeatedly ruled and recognized in this legislature the doctrine that a state, in accordance with the Constitution of the United States, cannot prevent white and black citizens who are qualified to serve as jurors from sitting in the same jury box, It is now solemnly decided. that a state may prohibit white and black citizens from sitting in the same passenger carriage. on a highway or may require that they be separated by a “bulkhead” if they are on the same passenger bus. Can it not now reasonably be expected that astute men of the ruling race, alarmed by the possibility that the integrity of the white race could be corrupted by contact with blacks on public streets, or that their supremacy would be threatened, would seek laws requiring that white and black jurors in the jury box be separated by a “separation wall.” and that, when they retire from the courtroom to deliberate on their verdict, such a division, if mobile, should be brought into their deliberation room and arranged in such a way that black jurors do not get too close to their white sworn fellow jurors. If the “partition” used in the courtroom is fixed, screens with openings could be provided through which jurors of both races could deliberate on their verdict without making personal contact with each other. I see no reason why, according to the principles proclaimed today, such state legislation, though conceived in hostility toward citizens of the United States of a particular race and enacted for the purpose of humiliation, should be considered constitutionally compatible. The defendant responded to this order by providing a certified copy of the proceedings, asserting the constitutionality of the law, and asserting that the said Plessy, instead of pleading or admitting that he belonged to the colored race, refused and refused, by plea or otherwise, to admit that he was a colored man in any way or manner.
With regard to civil rights, which are common to all citizens, I do not believe that the Constitution of the United States allows a public authority to know the race of those who are entitled to enjoy those rights. Every true man is proud of his race, and in appropriate circumstances, if the rights of others equal to him before the law are not to be affected, it is his prerogative to express that pride and to take such action as he deems appropriate on that basis. But I deny that any legislative body or court can take into account the race of citizens when it comes to the civil rights of those citizens. A rule such as that at issue in this case is contrary not only to the equality of national and national citizenship, but also to the personal liberty enjoyed by every person in the United States. During Reconstruction, the federal government granted African South Americans the right to vote and granted African-American citizens equal protection. When Reconstruction failed in 1877, the movement for the rights of African Americans faltered. When whites regained control of the South, they began enacting laws that oppressed African Americans through segregation (known as Jim Crow laws). These laws, enforced through criminal sanctions, have created separate schools, parks, waiting rooms and other social housing.
Learn about civil rights heroine Rosa Parks and four other women who were also forced off city buses, and how their courage led to a Federal Court decision to eliminate bus segregation. For more information, visit the Library of Congress` Rosa Parks Collection. The arrest of Homer Plessy (the petitioner in this case) was not a coincidence, but a pre-planned attempt to build a test case to challenge the Separate Car Act, organized by a group of New Orleans Creole professionals known as the Citizens` Committee. Homer Plessy, a Métis person, was deliberately chosen as the complainant to support the claim that the law could not be applied consistently because it did not define white and “coloured” races. Even the railway company cooperated with the citizens` committee because, in order to meet the requirements of the act, it had to incur unnecessary costs for the purchase of additional cars. Much closer, and even almost directly to the point, is the case of Louisville, N.O. & T. Ry. Co. v.
State, 133 U.S. 587, 10 Sup. Ct. 348, in which the railroad was charged with violating a Mississippi law that required all passenger railroads to provide equal but separate accommodations for white and colored races by providing two or more passenger cars for each passenger train or by dividing passenger cars by a bulkhead to provide separate accommodations. The case was presented from a different perspective than the present case, since it was an indictment against the railway company for failing to provide the separate accommodations, but the issue under consideration was the constitutionality of the legislation. In that case, the Mississippi Supreme Court (66 Miss. 662, 6 South. 203) held that the law applied only to intrastate commerce and, since it concerned the interpretation of state status by its highest court, this was accepted as conclusive.
“When it comes to respecting,” the court stated (page 591, 133 U.S. and page 348, 10 Sup. Ct.), “to fully respect intrastate commerce and not interfere with interstate commerce, then there is obviously no violation of the trade clause of the Federal Constitution. According to this article, there is no doubt about the power of the state to separate interstate passengers into different compartments or to interfere in any way with the privileges and rights of these passengers. All we can verify is whether the state has the power to require that railways within its borders have separate dwellings for the two races. The fact that only intrastate trade is affected is not an interference with the power conferred on Congress by the trade clause. The court`s altered perception of racial segregation and its decision in Brown I were influenced by UNESCO`s 1950 statement, The Race Question, as well as an article by Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944), which denounced earlier attempts to scientifically justify racism. Another document cited by the Supreme Court is research by educational psychologists Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark. The Clarks` “doll test” studies presented the Supreme Court with substantial arguments about how segregation affected the mental state of black schoolchildren. Although we believe that forced segregation of race applied to the internal commerce of the state does not restrict the privileges or immunities of the black man, deprive him of his property without due process, or deny him equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment, we are not prepared to say that the conductor, in the assignment of passengers to buses on the basis of their race, does not act at his own risk, or that the provision of the second section of the Act, which refuses to compensate the passenger for refusing to put him on the bus to which he truly belongs, constitutes a valid exercise of legislative power.
