The case in which the Supreme Court upheld state laws segregating
people by their race. Many believe these "Jim Crow" laws were passed
in large part to stop poor whites from a political and economic
alliance with blacks to threaten the established order in the
South.
This case turns upon the constitutionality of an act of the General
Assembly of the State of Louisiana, passed in 1890, providing for
separate railway carriages for the white and colored races...
The constitutionality of this act is attacked upon the ground that it
conflicts both with the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution,
abolishing slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits
certain restrictive legislation on the part of the States.
1. 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...
The proper construction of the 14th amendment was first called to the
attention of this court in the Slaughter-house cases, ... which
involved, however, not a question of race, but one of exclusive
privileges. The case did not call for any expression of opinion as to
the exact rights it was intended to secure to the colored race, but
it was said generally that its main purpose was to establish the
citizenship of the negro; to give definitions of citizenship of the
United States and of the States, and to protect from the hostile
legislation of the States the privileges and immunities of citizens
of the United States, as distinguished from those of citizens of the
States.
The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute
equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things
it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon
color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political
equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory
to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation in
places where they are liable to be brought into contact do not
necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and
have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the
competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police
power. The most common instance of this is connected with the
establishment of separate schools for white and colored children,
which has been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power
even by courts of States where the political rights of the colored
race have been longest and most earnestly enforced...
So far, then, as a conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment is
concerned, the case reduces itself to the question whether the
statute of Louisiana is a reasonable regulation, and with respect to
this there must necessarily be a large discretion on the part of the
legislature. In determining the question of reasonableness it is at
liberty to act with reference to the established usages, customs and
traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their
comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order.
Gauged by this standard, we cannot say that a law which authorizes or
even requires the separation of the two races in public conveyances
is unreasonable, or more obnoxious to the Fourteenth Amendment than
the acts of Congress requiring separate schools for colored children
in the District of Columbia, the constitutionality of which does not
seem to have been questioned, or the corresponding acts of state
legislatures.
We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to
consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two
races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be
so, it is not by reason of any-thing found in the act, but solely
because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.
The argument necessarily assumes that if, as has been more than once
the case, and is not unlikely to be so again, the colored race should
become the dominant power in the state legislature, and should enact
a law in precisely similar terms, it would thereby relegate the white
race to an inferior position. We imagine that the white race, at
least, would not acquiesce in this assumption. The argument also
assumes that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and
that equal rights cannot be secured to the negro except by an
enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this
proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social
equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual
appreciation of each other's merits and a voluntary consent of
individuals ... Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial
instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences,
and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the
difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political
rights of both races be equal one cannot be inferior to the other
civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other
socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon
the same plane...
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. 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...
In respect of civil rights, common to all citizens, the Constitution
of the United States does not, I think, permit any public authority
to know the race of those entitled to be protected in the enjoyment
of such rights. 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. But I deny that any legislative body or judicial
tribunal may have regard to the race of citizens when the civil
rights of those citizens are not involved. Indeed, such legislation,
as that here in question, is inconsistent not only with that equality
of rights which pertains to citizenship, National and State, but with
the personal liberty enjoyed by every one within the United
States...
The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country.
And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth
and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time,
if it remains true to its great heritage and holds fast to the
principles of constitutional liberty. But in view of the
Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no
superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here.
Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates
classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are
equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.
The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings
or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme
law of the land are involved. 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.
In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to
be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the
Dred Scott case ... The present decision, it may well be apprehended,
will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and
irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will
encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state
enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the
United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of
the Constitution, by one of which the blacks of this country were
made citizens of the United States and of the States in which they
respectively reside, and whose privileges and immunities, as
citizens, the States are forbidden to abridge. Sixty millions of
whites are in no danger from the presence here of eight millions of
blacks. 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. What can more certainly
arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling
of distrust between these races, than state enactments, which, in
fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and
degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches
occupied by white citizens? That, as all will admit, is the real
meaning of such legislation as was enacted in Louisiana...
If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon
public highways established for the benefit of all, they will be
infinitely less than those that will surely come from state
legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis
of race. We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all
other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a
state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and
degradation upon a large class of our fellow-citizens, our equals
before the law...
I am of opinion that the statute of Louisiana is inconsistent with
the personal liberty of citizens, white and black, in that State, and
hostile to both the spirit and letter of the Constitution of the
United States. If laws of like character should be enacted in the
several States of the Union, the effect would be in the highest
degree mischievous. Slavery, as an institution tolerated by law
would, it is true, have disappeared from our country, but there would
remain a power in the States, by sinister legislation, to interfere
with the full enjoyment of the blessings of freedom; to regulate
civil rights, common to all citizens upon the basis of race; and to
place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American
citizens, now constituting a part of the political community called
the People of the United States, for whom, and by whom through
representatives, our government is administered.
Source: 163 U.S. 537 (1896).