May 1896

Homer Plessy, a man of one-eighth African descent, was selected by the New Orleans Citizens' Committee as a test case to challenge Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890. On June 7, 1892, Plessy deliberately sat in a whites-only car and was arrested. The Supreme Court ruled 7–1 that 'separate but equal' facilities did not violate the 14th Amendment, holding that legal separation of the races did not imply inferiority. The decision provided constitutional sanction for the Jim Crow segregation system that Southern states were constructing. Justice John Marshall Harlan's dissent argued that 'our Constitution is color-blind' and that the decision would prove as pernicious as Dred Scott. Plessy remained binding precedent for 58 years until Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

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.

The Supreme Court blesses "separate but equal," constitutionalizing Jim Crow for half a century.