In den Augen der Gerichtsmehrheit bezog sich der 14. ", They declared, in legal effect, this court has further said, "that the law in the States shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the States, and, in regard to the colored race, for whose protection the amendment was primarily designed, that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color. Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303, 306, 307; Virginia v. Rives, 100 U. S. 313; Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U. S. 370, 386; Bush v. Kentucky, 107 U. S. 110, 116.
The managers of the railroad are not allowed to exercise any discretion in the premises, but are required to assign each passenger to some coach or compartment set apart for the exclusive use of his race. Co. v. State, 133 U. S. 587, 10 Sup. No one would be so wanting in candor as to assert the contrary. 210 . That it does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, is too clear for argument.

Indeed, we do not understand that the thirteenth amendment is strenuously relied upon by the plaintiff in error in this connection. Homer Plessy, a 1/8 African American citizen, was considered African American under the legislation. Why may it not, upon like grounds, punish whites and blacks who ride together in street cars or in open vehicles on a public road or street? Every true man has pride of race, and, under appropriate circumstances, when the rights of others, his equals before the law, are not to be affected, it is his privilege to express such pride and to take such action based upon it as to him seems proper.

It is claimed by the plaintiff in error that, in any mixed community, the reputation of belonging to the dominant race, in this instance the white race, is property in the same sense that a right of action or of inheritance is property.

Ann. It is quite another thing for government to forbid citizens of the white and black races from traveling in the same public conveyance, and to punish officers of railroad companies for permitting persons of the two races to occupy the same passenger coach. They removed the race line from our governmental systems. Railroad corporations of Louisiana did not make discrimination among whites in the matter of commodation for travelers. This amendment was said in the Slaughterhouse Cases, 16 Wall. Im gleichen Jahr lehnte der Oberste Gerichtshof des Staates Louisiana Plessys Einspruch gegen das Urteil von Ferguson ab (Ex parte Plessy, 1892). So, where the laws of a particular locality or the charter of a particular railway corporation has provided that no person shall be excluded from the cars on account of. There is no caste here. Justice Harlan had been born in Kentucky in 1833 and grew up in a family of enslavers. I cannot see but that, according to the principles this day announced, such state legislation, although conceived in hostility to, and enacted for the purpose of humiliating, citizens of the United States of a particular race, would be held to be consistent with the Constitution. Robert J. McNamara is a history expert and former magazine journalist. 313; Ex parte Virginia, Id. If a colored maid insists upon riding in the same coach with a white woman whom she has been employed to serve, and who may need her personal attention while traveling, she is subject to be fined or imprisoned for such an exhibition of zeal in the discharge of duty.
The reply to all this is that every exercise of the police power must be reasonable, and extend only to such laws as are enacted in good faith for the promotion of the public good, and not for the annoyance or oppression of a particular class. The destinies of the two races in this country are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law. [12] In speaking for the court's decision that Ferguson's judgment did not violate the 14th Amendment, Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Charles Erasmus Fenner cited a number of precedents, including two key cases from Northern states. The first section of the statute enacts 'that all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this state, shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations: provided, that this section shall not be construed to apply to street railroads. Hinsichtlich ihrer weiterreichenden Konsequenzen hatte die Entscheidung allerdings dramatische Folgen für das öffentliche Leben in den Südstaaten. The answer given at the argument to these questions was that regulations of the kind they suggest would be unreasonable, and could not, therefore, stand before the law. While we think the enforced separation of the races, as applied to the internal commerce of the state, neither abridges the privileges or immunities of the colored man, deprives him of his property without due process of law, nor denies him the equal protection of the laws, within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment, we are not prepared to say that the conductor, in assigning passengers to the coaches according to their race, does not act at his peril, or that the provision of the second section of the act that denies to the passenger compensation in damages for a refusal to receive him into the coach in which he properly belongs is a valid exercise of the legislative power. App.) There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States.

Plessy v. Ferguson ist ein 1896 vom Obersten Gerichtshof der Vereinigten Staaten entschiedener Fall, der als Grundsatzentscheidung in der Geschichte des Gerichts gilt. We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. 564: "The establishment of that great thoroughfare is regarded as a public work, established by public authority, intended for the public use and benefit, the use of which is secured to the whole community, and constitutes, therefore, like a canal, turnpike or highway, a public easement. Upon the filing of this petition, an order was issued upon the respondent to show cause why a writ of prohibition should not issue, and be made perpetual, and a further order that the record of the proceedings had in the criminal cause be certified and transmitted to the supreme court. Mr. Sedgwick correctly states the rule when he says that, the legislative intention being clearly ascertained, "the courts have no other duty to perform than to execute the legislative will, without any regard to their views as to the wisdom or justice of the particular enactment." It is therefore to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a State to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race. I allude to the Chinese race.