Plessy v. Ferguson
"Mr. Justice Brown delivered the opinion of the Court....
The object of the [Fourteenth] 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 on 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, that 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."
The so-called Jim Crow segregation laws gained significant impetus from U. S. Supreme Court rulings in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. In 1883, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The 1875 law stipulated: "That all persons ... shall be entitled to full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement." The Court reviewed five separate complaints involving acts of discrimination on a railroad and in public sites, including a theater in San Francisco and the Grand Opera House in New York. In declaring the federal law unconstitutional, Chief Justice Joseph Bradley held that the Fourteenth Amendment did not protect black people from discrimination by private businesses and individuals but only from discrimination by states. He observed in his opinion that it was time for blacks to assume "the rank of a mere citizen" and stop being the "special favorite of the laws." Justice John Marshall Harlan vigorously dissented, arguing that hotels and amusement parks and public conveyances were public services that operated under state permission and thus were subject to public control.
It was not long after the Court's decision striking down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 that southern states began enacting sweeping segregation legislation. In 1890, Louisiana required by law that blacks ride in separate railroad cars. In protest of the law, blacks in the state tested the statute's constitutionality by having a light-skinned African American, HomœGe Plessy, board a train, whereupon he was quickly arrested for sitting in a car reserved for whites. A local judge ruled against Plessy and in 1896 the U. S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. The Court asserted that Plessy's rights were not denied him because the separate accommodations provided to blacks were equal to those provided whites. It also ruled that "separate but equal" accommodations did not stamp the "colored race with a badge of inferiority." Again, Justice Harlan protested in a minority opinion: "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens."