![]() ![]() ![]() Thus, the State regulates the use of a public highway by citizens of the United States solely upon the basis of race. So that we have before us a state enactment that compels, under penalties, the separation of the two races in railroad passenger coaches, and makes it a crime for a citizen of either race to enter a coach that has been assigned to citizens of the other race. Justice Harlan wrote: “While there may be in Louisiana persons of different races who are not citizens of the United States, the words in the act ‘white and colored races’ necessarily include all citizens of the United States of both races residing in that State. He noted that the law was intended not to exclude whites from railroad cars carrying blacks, but to exclude blacks from railroad cars carrying whites. Justice Harlan’s sole dissent stated that the law implicated civil, not just political, inequality. The Court also held that the state statute itself was not based on an assumption of black inferiority, nor did it stigmatize blacks with second-class status rather, “the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.” Thus, the Fourteenth Amendment did not encompass segregation, and states could permissibly exercise their police power to enforce segregation as a matter of public policy. The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Brown, upheld the Louisiana law, reasoning that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution was designated to enforce the political equality of blacks and whites but not intended to abolish social inequality. In 1892, the state of Louisiana prosecuted Homer Plessy, a man who was 7/8 Caucasian and 1/8 Black, for refusing to leave a passenger car designated for whites. ![]() Louisiana had adopted a law in 1890 that required railroad companies to provide racially segregated accommodations. It was subsequently since overturned by Brown v. Ferguson (1896) is the Supreme Court case that had originally upheld the constitutionality of “ separate, but equal facilities” based on race. ![]()
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