|
1
|
- 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 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
|
|
2
|
- [The statute provides that] 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.
- No person or persons shall be permitted to occupy seats in coaches,
other than the ones assigned to them, on account of the race they belong
to.'
|
|
3
|
- The information filed in the criminal district court charged, in
substance, that Plessy, being a passenger between two stations within
the state of Louisiana, was assigned by officers of the company to the
coach used for the race to which he belonged, but he insisted upon going
into a coach used by the race to which he did not belong.
|
|
4
|
- The petition for the writ of
prohibition averred that petitioner was seven-eights Caucasian and
one-eighth African blood; that the mixture of colored blood was not
discernible in him; and that he was entitled to every right, privilege,
and immunity secured to citizens of the United States of the white race;
|
|
5
|
- Neither in the information nor plea was his particular race or color
averred.
- upon such theory, he took possession of a vacant seat in a coach where
passengers of the white race were accommodated, and was ordered by the
conductor to vacate said coach, and take a seat in another,
assigned to persons of the colored race, and, having refused to comply
with such demand, he was forcibly ejected, with the aid of a police
officer, and imprisoned in the parish jail to answer a charge of having
violated the above act.
|
|
6
|
- 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.
|
|
7
|
- 1. That it does not conflict with the thirteenth amendment, which
abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except a punishment for
crime, is too clear for argument.
- Slavery implies involuntary servitude,-a state of bondage; the ownership
of mankind as a chattel, or, at least, the control of the labor and
services of one man for the benefit of another, and the absence of a
legal right to the disposal of his own person, property, and services.
- This amendment was said in the Slaughter-House Cases to have been
intended primarily to abolish slavery, as it had been previously known
in this country
|
|
8
|
- A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and
colored races-a distinction which is founded in the color of the two
races, and which must always exist so long as white men are
distinguished from the other race by color-has no tendency to destroy
the legal equality of the two races, or re-establish a state of
involuntary servitude.
- Indeed, we do not understand that the thirteenth amendment is
strenuously relied upon by the plaintiff in error in this connection.
|
|
9
|
- The object of the amendment [XIV]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 have 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
|
|
10
|
- The thirteenth amendment does not permit the withholding or the
deprivation of any right necessarily inhering in freedom. It not only
struck down the institution of slavery as previously existing in the
United States, but it prevents the imposition of any burdens or
disabilities that constitute badges of slavery or servitude. It decreed
universal civil freedom in this country. This court has so adjudged.
|
|
11
|
- I am of opinion that the state 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.
|
|
12
|
- 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
|
Notes
