page_title: Separate but equal
section_title: Plessy v. Ferguson
hierarchical_section_title: Separate but equal / Early legal support / Plessy v. Ferguson
caption_attribution_description: English: Sign on a restaurant: "We Cater to White Trade only.", taken in Lancaster, Ohio
context_page_description: Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guaranteed "equal protection" under the law to all people. Under the doctrine, as long as the facilities provided to each race were equal, state and local governments could require that services, facilities, public accommodations, housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation be segregated by "race", which was already the case throughout the states of the former Confederacy. The phrase was derived from a Louisiana law of 1890, although the law actually used the phrase "equal but separate".
  The doctrine was confirmed in the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation. Though segregation laws existed before that case, the decision emboldened segregation states during the Jim Crow era, which had commenced in 1876 and supplanted the Black Codes, which restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans during the Reconstruction Era.
context_section_description: The legitimacy of such laws under the 14th Amendment was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537. The Plessy doctrine was extended to the public schools in Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education, 175 U.S. 528 (1899).
  In 1892, Homer Plessy, who was of mixed ancestry and appeared to be white, boarded an all-white railroad car between New Orleans and Covington, Louisiana. The conductor of the train collected passenger tickets at their seats. When Plessy told the conductor he was ​⁷⁄₈ white and ​¹⁄₈ black, he was informed that he had to move to a coloreds-only car. Plessy said he resented sitting in a coloreds-only car and was arrested immediately.
  One month after his arrest, Plessy appeared in court before Judge John Howard Ferguson. Plessy's lawyer, Albion Tourgee, claimed Plessy's 13th and 14th amendment rights were violated. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, and the 14th amendment granted equal protection to all under the law.
  The Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson formalized the legal principle of "separate but equal". The ruling required "railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in that State to provide equal, but separate, accommodations for the white and colored races". Accommodations provided on each railroad car were required to be the same as those provided on the others. Separate railroad cars could be provided. The railroad could refuse service to passengers who refused to comply, and the Supreme Court ruled this did not infringe upon the 13th and 14th amendments.
  The "separate but equal" doctrine applied to all public facilities: not only railroad cars but schools, medical facilities, theaters, restaurants, restrooms, and drinking fountains. However, neither state nor Congress put "separate but equal" into the statute books, meaning the provision of equal services to non-whites could not be legally enforced. The only possible remedy was through federal court, but costly legal fees and expenses meant that this was out of the question for individuals; it took an organization with resources, the NAACP, to file and pursue Brown v. Board of Education.
  "Equal" facilities were the exception rather than the rule. The facilities and social services offered to African Americans were almost always of a lower quality than those offered to white Americans, if they existed at all. Most African-American schools had less public funding per student than nearby white schools; they had old textbooks, discarded by the white schools, used equipment, and poorly paid, prepared, or trained teachers. In addition, according to a study conducted by the American Psychological Association, black students are emotionally impaired when segregated at a young age. In Texas, the state established a state-funded law school for white students but none for black students. As previously mentioned, the majority of counties in Florida during the 1930s had no high school for African-American students. African Americans had to pay state and local taxes that were used for the benefit of whites only. (See Florida A&M Hospital for an example.)
  Although the "Separate but Equal" doctrine was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the implementation of the changes this decision required was long, contentious, and sometimes violent (see Massive resistance and Southern Manifesto). It can be considered ongoing (see Black Lives Matter). While modern legal doctrine interprets the 14th amendment to prohibit explicit segregation on the basis of race, societal issues surrounding racial discrimination still remain topical (see Racial profiling).
caption: A restaurant in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1938
exif: {"Image PhotometricInterpretation": "1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image ExifOffset": "50", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3565", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2747"}