Plessy v. Ferguson noted the constitutionality of laws requiring separate but equal public housing for African Americans and whites. The majority of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such laws violated neither a “badge of servitude” (in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibits slavery) nor the legal equality of blacks (in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection of the law) because accommodations were supposed to be equal and separation did not imply legal inferiority. In subsequent decisions, the Supreme Court decided to further accelerate the desegregation process. In Milliken v. Bradley, the court concluded that even if a county`s current practices could meet court standards, the court could force a county to establish remedial programs to fill educational gaps resulting from past behaviors. In 1990, in Missouri v. Jenkins, the court ruled that federal courts could even order local counties to raise taxes to fund these reparation programs. The court`s altered perception of racial segregation and its decision in Brown I were influenced by UNESCO`s 1950 statement, The Race Question, as well as an article by Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944), which denounced earlier attempts to scientifically justify racism.
Another document cited by the Supreme Court is research by educational psychologists Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark. The Clarks` “doll test” studies presented the Supreme Court with substantial arguments about how segregation affected the mental state of black schoolchildren. The court also cited the Kansas court, which had ruled that “the separation of white and colored children in public schools has adverse effects on children of color. The effect is greater if it has the sanction of the law; For the policy of racial segregation is generally interpreted as the inferiority of the black group. A feeling of inferiority influences a child`s motivation to learn. Legally sanctioned segregation therefore tends to delay the educational and mental development of black children and deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school. While Justice Brown, a Northerner, justified segregation, Judge John Marshall Harlan, a Kentucky Southerner, ironically made a solitary, deep and powerful dissent.
The most famous phrase of the Harlan opinion of Justice reads: “Our Constitution is colorblind and does not know or tolerate classes among citizens.” Harlan`s dissent became the driving force behind the court`s unanimous decision in Brown v. School Board in 1954. In his dissent, Justice Harlan also wrote: “This decision, understandably, will not only provoke a more or less brutal and irritating assault on the recognized rights of colored citizens, but will also promote the belief that it is possible to thwart by government decrees the charitable purpose which the people of the United States had in mind. when it adopted recent amendments to the Constitution”. The legitimacy of such laws after the 14th. The U.S. Supreme Court made an amendment in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
The Plessy Doctrine was extended to public schools in Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education, 175 U.S. 528 (1899). [ref. needed] I do not consider it necessary to review the decisions of the national courts mentioned in the arguments. Some, and most important, of them are completely unenforceable because they were made before the passage of the last amendments to the Constitution, when people of color had very few rights that the ruling race had to respect. Others were made at a time when public opinion in many places was dominated by the institution of slavery; whether it had not been prudent to bring justice to the black man; and whether, as far as black rights are concerned, racial prejudice is practically the supreme law of the land. These decisions cannot guide the era ushered in by the recent amendments to supreme law that established universal civil liberty, gave citizenship to all who were born, naturalized, and resided in the United States, erased the racial line from our national and state systems of government, and placed our free institutions on the broad and secure foundation of the equality of all peoples before the United States. The court ruled that the trial court filed in the district criminal court essentially accused Plessy, a passenger between two Louisiana state stations, of being assigned by company agents to the bus used for the ride to which he belonged, but he insisted on boarding a bus used by the race to which he did not belong. Neither in the information nor in the application was his particular race or colour indicated. The Supreme Court`s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson formalized the legal principle of “separate but equal.” The decision required that “railroads that carry passengers in their cars in this state provide equal but separate accommodation for white and colored races.” [17] The layout of each car had to be identical to those of the others.
Separate railway cars could be provided. The railroad could deny service to passengers who refused, and the Supreme Court ruled that this did not violate the 13th and 14th Amendments.