Justice Harlan's Dissent: 'Constitution Is Color-Blind'

Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former Kentucky slaveholder, writes the sole dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson. He argues the majority's 'separate but equal' doctrine is a fiction that brands Black citizens with 'a badge of inferiority' and that the 13th and 14th Amendments make the Constitution 'color-blind.' His dissent is ignored for 58 years until Brown v. Board of Education implicitly vindicates it.