Abstract

In 1955 Vann Woodward, in his book The Strange Career of Jim Crow, challenged the conventional history of the times with his demonstration that racial segregation, far from being a long standing and inevitable American folkway, came gradually on the scene in the late nineteenth century and attained its most absurd developments only in the twentieth century. Indeed, it was only after the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, upholding an 1890 railroad segregation statute and validating state-imposed segregation as equality, that rigid segregation-in-fact began to run rampant. Then, with increasing frequency, it began to be transmitted by legislation into an elaborate, but unsystematic and often conflicting, body of Jim Crow laws. Segregation statutes "lent the sanction of law to a racial ostracism that extended to churches and schools, to housing and jobs, to eating and drinking … to virtually all forms of public transportation, to sports and recreations, to hospitals, orphanages, prisons, and asylums, and ultimately to funeral homes, morgues, and cemeteries. It seems today that Plessy was indeed one of the pivotal decisions of the Supreme Court.

There was a time in the 1960's when segregation did seem to be vanishing, but the intractable problems of segregated housing and the "bussing issue" of today serve to warn us that there are miles to go before the nation, like the Constitution, is "color blind." That the malign effects of this unfortunate decision are still with us today is reason enough to consider its strange career.

The plain fact is that Plessy v. Ferguson cannot withstand searching constitutional scrutiny. The decision has been characterized by Harris as a "compound of bad logic, bad history, bad sociology, and bad constitutional law." It was also, he suggests, bad psychology and bad jurisprudence. Before subjecting Plessy to demanding analysis, it is important to provide an historical perspective outlining conditions of segregation before 1896, explaining how Plessy originated, and more technically, how it reached the Supreme Court of the United States. Then a full-scale analysis of the Court's handling of the thirteenth and fourteenth amendment contentions can be undertaken which exposes the psychological and sociological infirmities in the Court's reasoning. Finally, the historical aftermath of Plessy must be evaluated: what was Plessy's impact on our society, was it effectively overruled and what is its historical significance?

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