- [Narrator] After the Civil War, the United States embarked on an era of reconstruction during which the country grappled with the painful history of slavery. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution sought to eradicate the taint of slavery by outlawing it, and guaranteeing black citizens equal treatment under the law and the right to vote. However, there was a lot of resistance to racial equality, particularly in the south. By the 1870s reconstruction had fizzled out giving way to the Jim Crow era. Named after the minstrel show Jump Jim Crow, this period was defined by racial segregation laws passed by southern states. Plessy versus Ferguson is the now infamous case in which the United States Supreme Court declared it constitutional for races to be kept separate. In 1892 Homer Plessy took a trip. He bought a first class ticket, got onto the trian, and settled in one of the coaches. The conductor told Plessy to move to a different coach, but he refused. So Plessy was thrown off the train and into a jail cell. Under an 1890 state law railways within Louisiana were required to have "equal but separate" coaches for black and white passengers. Anyone refusing to sit in the assigned coach could be fined $25 or imprisoned for up to 20 days. As a U.S. citizen who was 7/8 white and 1/8 black, Plessy argued that he was white and deserved to sit in the coach reserved for white passengers. However, under Louisiana law Plessy was considered black. So Plessy was put on trial in state court for breaking the law by sitting in the wrong coach. At trial Plessy argued that the law was unconstitutional, but the government disagreed. Judge Ferguson sided with the government. If convicted Plessy would be sentenced to prison and charged a fine. Plessy asked the Louisiana Supreme Court to issue a writ of prohibition against Judge Ferguson to prevent him from enforcing the law. But the Louisiana Supreme Court found the law constitutional. So Plessy asked for writ of error from the United States Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the case to determine whether Louisiana law requiring racially segregated railway coaches was constitutional. Writing for the majority Justice Brown concluded that the law didn't violate the 14th Amendment. The Amendment was designed to make everyone equal under the law, but it wasn't intended to eliminate distinctions based on race. The majority thought that political equality of the races wasn't compromised by segregation. State laws creating racially segregated facilities thus didn't violate the equal protection clause if those facilities were "separate but equal." Laws requiring segregation could be legitimate exercises of state police power provided they were reasonable and based on good faith rather than racist motives. Here, Louisiana was simply respecting the fact that the two races preferred remaining segregated. In other words, it wasn't the laws job, or even within the laws power to force the races to mix. The court also found that the 13th Amendment, which Plessy argued was violated by the Louisiana law, was a non-issue because the case had nothing to do with abolishing slavery or involuntary servitude. Therefore, the court affirmed the Louisiana Supreme Court's decision. In a powerful dissent Justice Harlan found that the Louisiana law was discriminatory, because it sought to keep black passengers from coaches reserved for white passengers. Harlan stated that the law was clearly intended to keep black people away from white people. This was a violation of civil rights. Harlan said the Constitution is color-blind, and a state couldn't constitutionally deprive citizens of their rights based on their races. For Justice Harlan the majorities decision was like the Supreme Court's infamous self-inflicted wound in Dred Scott versus Sandford. Harlan thought Plessy would foster animosity, and basically predicted that it would be overturned. Harlan would have found the Louisiana law unconstitutional. It's worth noting, however, that as progressive as Justice Harlan's views were, he didn't believe in equal rights for all mankind. His dissent distinguished Chinese people, and he didn't quibble with the exclusion of the Chinese race from citizenship. The Supreme Court's decision in Plessy versus Ferguson justified racial discrimination in the United States based on the separate but equal doctrine. In 1954, Plessy was finally overturned by Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka.