Separate and Unequal: Homer Plessy and the Supreme Court Decision that Legalized Racism
When Homer Plessy, a fair-skinned black man, challenged the laws on separate accommodations in 1892, he triggered a process that would eventually codify separate but equal as a national doctrine of racism. Civil rights historian Fireside explores the social and historical context in which Plessy challenged the mistreatment of blacks--and eventually lost. Fireside details the lives of Plessy and the Creole community of free people of color who resisted the erosion of their hard-won civil equality and economic independence during Reconstruction. He also portrays Plessy's attorney, Albion W. Tourgee, characterized at the time as a carpetbagger, who took on the case at no charge. But the temperament of the Supreme Court had shifted back to the pre-Civil War view of states' rights and was influenced as well by concerns with reconciling with the South for the sake of the nation's economic development. The separate-but-equal doctrine would stand untilPlessywas overturned in 1954 by theBrowndecision. This is an engrossing account of a shameful ruling.Vanessa BushCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.