Talk:Plessy v. Ferguson

Plessey's Race

the writer of this article placed emphasis on the fact that Plessy was 1/8 black. Sometimes people seem to forget that. It never fails to puzzle me that a man who is only an 1/8th black could even look black, to a point where he would be asked to sit in the "black section." Either the train conductor was hyper/unnaturally aware of any faint trace of "color" in the skin or he knew Plessy, or of his family, from before the fact. Actually, the train conductor had been previously informed that there was going to be a protest that day. Plessy had actually belonged to a specific committee that challenged the segregation on public trains. As for how did the conductor know it was Plessy who was involved is still a mystery to me. --Chandni S

It's a very strange case. --Ashley Rovira 22:25, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

It wasn't strange, it was planned. Those who wanted to challenge "separate but equal" deliberately chose to deploy a person who looked white, but was black according to law, in order to highlight the unfairness of the law allowing racial segregation. To ensure that Plessy would be ordered out of the white section of the train, the railroad was told that he would be aboard. But the railroad employees didn't know and couldn't tell who the black was sitting in the white section, so Plessy told them himself -- otherwise there would have been no point to the entire adventure. The railroad could then have prevented a lawsuit they knew they were being set up for but 1. other white passengers, overhearing Plessy, would certainly have objected -- they were paying a premium to be seated only with fellow whites. 2. the railroad wanted to enforce its policy, i.e. to eject any Negro discovered to be violating its rules and scaring its market by infiltrating white passenger compartments (blacks who could pass for white were notoriously common in Louisiana, thanks to the genetic legacy of the "Octoroon Balls"). Since the railroad won their case in court, their decision to eject Plessy was vindicated legally and market-wise, if not morally. Lethiere 19:42, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

The Plessy case is a lesson for the planners of civil rights litigation. Setting up a case to ask what difference legal race means when the party appears to belong to another race taunted the Court. The better case would have a clearly black person seek to ride with a white person to discuss business on the train. Where would the railroad seat them? That would reveal the way segregation interfered with economic development in the South. Today, we can all learn to pick our cases more wisely. r3 02:58, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

The article says:

Justice Brown declared, "We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption chodemanthat the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it."

Then it adds:

In other words, the Court held that state governments could bar blacks from public facilities based on traditional notions of racial inferiority.

But that's not what Brown said. He said that while African Americans and Caucasian Americans were separated, the fact that one was supperior or inferior to the other only came from what African American people themselves were suggesting in their lawsuit. One may disgree with that statement, but that is his point. I'm replacing "In other words" with "In consequence".

There seems to be a conflict in the "facts" of the Plessy v. Ferguson United States Supreme Court decision. In the main article of Plessy v. Ferguson it states :

"The railroad company had been informed already as to Plessy's racial lineage, and after Plessy had taken a seat in the whites-only railway car, he was asked to vacate it and sit instead in the blacks-only car. Plessy refused and was arrested immediately."

which seems to indicate that a third party had informed beforehand by a third party of Plessy's racial liniage. This is contardicted by the Homer Plessy page which states:

"On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railroad, running between New Orleans and Covington, and sat in the "whites only" passenger car. When the conductor came to collect his ticket, he told him that he was 1/8 African American, and he was refusing sit in the black only car."

Could someone out there who has any idea about this case please rectify this contradiction.

Actualy, within the text, it is stated that "Plessy appeared to be a white man, and consequently he had to inform the conductor of his heritage before any objection was even made to his seat choice."

what the heck, mate?

Why is the French version of this article longer than the English? They have the legal reasoning from the majority and dissent -- let's get somebody to write that in English!

Agreed -- we just covered this in my con law class; there's a heck of a lot more to say about it -- the "priveleges and immunities" v. "priveleges or immunities" clauses, equal protection clause, due process clause, and 13th & 14th Amendments each deserve at least a paragraph, not to mention at least a sentence or two on the distinction between substantive and procedural due process used by Brown. Harlan's dissent is legendary and should be given a lot more play. I'll give it what time I have soon, hopefully. Ryanluck 04:35, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE SAID ABOUT THURGOOD MARSHALL'S INVOLVEMENT IN PLESSY. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.151.79.254 (talk) 23:24, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

and what exactly was that? Marshall was born 12 years after Plessy was decided --Unclebanglin (talk) 22:29, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

later cases

This article notes that Plessy found the quality of accomodation in the whites-only and blacks-only first-class railroad cars to be equivalent, and therefore "separate but equal", but also notes that the same was not true of many other segregated facilities. The obvious question that raises then is: Did anyone challenge any other facilities, not on the mere fact of their being segregated, but specifically on the basis of their being unequal? If so, did any of those challenges reach the Supreme Court? This seems like it'd be useful information towards the end of the article. --Delirium 07:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)..

Thirteenth Amendment vs. Fourteenth Amendment

Thirteenth Amendment vs. Fourteenth Amendment???

Wasn't it the Fourteenth Amendment???? Equal Protection of the Laws instead of the abolishion of involuntary servitute that Plessy claimed to be violated.

My history textbooks says so and it makes more sense in my eyes.

Sources: Schmidt Shelly Bardes, American Governmant and Politics Today, 2005-2006 Alternate Edition, page 153.

Dynmics of Democracy, 2004 Version, Third Edition, Peverill Squire and more, page 147.

--Carsten79 00:47, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Who is Justice Pham, I've never heard of him and aparently google has not either. With Brewer sitting out, it should have been a 7-1 majority however the site says 8-1 with brewer out and a mysterious pham appearing twice in the article.

--ARiina 23:01, 14 November 2006 (EST)

The decision was 7-1, so it seems, though all the references I can find simply state that Brown was writing "for the court" while Harlan dissented and Brewer didn't take part. The mysterious "Pham" may be Rufus Peckham of Lochner fame. The reason the 13th Amendment comes up is that in his dissent Harlan states "We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow-citizens, our equals before the law." (American Constitutional Law, Fisher, 6th ed., p. 769.) The "bond of servitude" seems to be a clear reference to the 13th Amendment, which prohibits "involuntary servitude." The 13th Amendment Dogdoridns does seem a bit redundant in light of the 14th's equal protection clause, but they had different purposes. The 13th was specifically to end black slavery, so Harlan's reference to it may be a reference that the Louisiana laws violate even the most basic notion of equal protection present in the Constitution. Ryanluck 16:36, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Plessy challenged the Louisiana Law for violating both the 13th and 14th amendment. I would think Plessy's argument that it violated the 13th Amendment was something like this: "This was discrimination which implied a legal inferiority in civil society, which lessened the security of the colored race, and was a step toward reducing them to a condition of servility." (This quote was taken out of the Plessy opinion written by J. Brown, but the Court was discussing another case. I liked the language and think this is essentially the argument Plessy made as to the 13th amendment violation.) The majority opinion was that this statute does not conflict with the 13th Amendment whatsoever.

I think there should be a correction made to the Wikipedia Article. In the decision section it says: "In a 7 to 1 decision in which Justice David Josiah Brewer did not participate,[3] the Court rejected Plessy's arguments based on the Fourteenth [this should be Thirteenth] Amendment, seeing no way in which the Louisiana statute violated it. In addition, the majority of the Court rejected the view that the Louisiana law implied any inferiority of blacks, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead, it contended that the law separated the two races as a matter of public policy."

It seems to me that the original author did write Thirteenth Amendment first, and someone changed it to the Fourteenth Amendment (from the way the paragraph is written). I know for sure the court addressed the 13th, as well as the 14th Amendment violations: "That [the challenged LA statute] does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, is too clear for argument." Cristinalipan (talk) 17:15, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Protection

This article's seeing a lot of vandalism, how about some protection to stop this continuing to happen? Tphi 16:22, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Ferguson?

This article identifies Homer Plessy but makes no mention of the other party to the case, John Howard Ferguson, who I believe was the Lousiana judge who made the initial ruling against Plessy. Could we get some information on his role? MK2 19:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that too. Considering his name is also linked to both the case and the article, readers should know who John Ferguson was, along with Homer Plessy. Dialwon 02:50, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree. The case involves both Homer A. Plessy and Ferguson. I don't think that readers should be restricted on this knowledge in the Plessy vs. Ferguson article. It would be rather convenient for information-seekers to find information on Ferguson in this article instead of having to search for a whole new article. --~Keith (talk) 23:08, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Biographical details about John Howard Ferguson, who was from New England, are contained in the book by Keith Weldon Medley, We as Freedmen Skywriter (talk) 17:39, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech

Booker T. Washington delivered the 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech in the year "prior" to Plessy v. Ferguson--September 18, 1895. The article states, "Along with Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise address, delivered the same year, which accepted black social isolation from white society, Plessy provided an impetus for further segregation laws."

The article should be edited to read, "Along with Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise address, delivered the previous year, which accepted black social isolation from white society, Plessy provided an impetus for further segregation laws."

Thanks. --Robert Lucas 03:38, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

ATLANTA COMPROMISE A YEAR EARLIER

Washington's Atlanta Compromise speech was a year earlier, in 1895, not the same year as Plessy, as the article states. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.193.243.216 (talk) 13:31, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Reaction

This article needs a section on the reaction to the case. What did whites do? Was there a black reaction? What about other reactions, ideological or physical. Piratejosh85 (talk) 03:57, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

There's quite a lot of information about this case in the current issue of The New Orleans Tribune including an article by a sitting Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court. [1] and [2]Skywriter (talk) 23:43, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Error on main page

The main page of this article says the Supreme Court decision was 8-1. This is incorrect, the decision was 7-1. Justice Harlan dissented; Justice Brewer didn't participate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.200.197.250 (talk) 21:53, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Recent blanking of entire section

Someone blanked the section on the Plessy Ferguson foundation based on the allegation that it is advertising. Please discuss how this fits the criteria for WP:advertising. Skywriter (talk) 18:08, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

It's not exactly advertising, but it is using an article to promote an organization with a tertiary relevance to the article. If this organization is notable per WP:ORG, it can get its own article and a See Also from this article (since there is a connection, however tenuous), but the fact remains that the section is wildly out of place in an article on the history of an landmark civil rights case; there is no reason to discuss a modern day organization connected by an accident of birth. Sections in an article should inform the reader as to the subject of the article; this addition is human interest at best. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 18:39, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Great! We concur that the section is not advertising. You contend that the section promotes an organization. A mention is not promotion. Mention is what Wikipedia editors do all the time. The Plessy-Ferguson foundation raised funds to place the marker commemorating Plessy's act of civil disobedience, his arrest, and the Supreme Court decision that followed, along with whatever else is linked to in this article. It is of historic interest that the descendants of the named plaintiffs have moved beyond ancestral interests to embrace corrections to the high court's ill-advised decision. And yes, it is of human interest and of historical interest. There are no WP policies against either. If you have more information from WP:RS that would make this section an article, you are free to create the article. The information that now stands is an interesting postscript to a historic case and surely belongs with this article. Skywriter (talk) 19:52, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's advertising to mention it. But I think the current content is WP:UNDUE on an only-marginally-related topic. Placing a commemorative marker is on-topic. That decendents have done something lately based on this decision is close-to-topic. Other details about that organization are not...that's getting towards the spirit of WP:COATRACKing. Just because some facets of the group or its activities are relevant to topic X I don't think that "anything and everything about the group" is suddenly in-scope for an article specifically about topic X. DMacks (talk) 21:43, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

(unindent)Would you tie the wording in the blanked section directly to what you believe is WP:COATRACKing?

Would you tie the wording in the blanked section directly to what you believe is WP:UNDUE

What wording would you like to see changed?

Thanks. Skywriter (talk) 21:53, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

By sheer relative amount, it adds too much about one extremely small facet to a page about so many aspects of the case. The quote in the second paragraph, actually the whole second paragraph, is pretty redundant with the other content. We don't need to hear their sound-bite, since the meaning behind it (moving on, together) is already discussed in the first. Details surrounding that quote (and in-text notes about the citation) are even less necessary, except for the fact that the families and other relevant players came together (see para 1) to set this plaque (para 3). The first paragraph also seems like a PR mission statement (tone problems). The third paragraph also seems like a self-contained capsule rather than part of a full article about the topic (already know who Plessy was, what he did, etc.) Proposed more concise wording that refocuses on relevance to case and factual description integrated into article:

Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson, descendants of the players on both sides of the Supreme Court case, together founded the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation for Education and Reconciliation to create new ways to teach the history of civil rights through film, art, and public programs to create understanding of this historic case and its effect on the American conscience. In 2009, the Plessy and Ferguson families, along with families joined with a member of the Louisiana Supreme Court placed an historical marker on the corner of Press and Royal Streets, the spot where Homer Plessy was thrown off the railway car and arrested.

DMacks (talk) 22:27, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

(unindent)I fully support editing and tightening, and I do it all the time. However, I do not support deleting references so leave these in.

Please leave this in also as it is factual and of interest to people who live in or visit New Orleans.

The marker was placed on the corner of Press and Royal Streets, marking the spot in 1892 where Homer Plessy was, in an act of planned civil disobedience, thrown off the railway car and arrested.

Thanks. Skywriter (talk) 00:13, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

The references definitely need to stay, I didn't include them (or perhaps some bluelinks) because I didn't yet check to figure out which ones were best to support which statements. I wasn't even sure if this group actually was deeply involved in placing the marker, or was just one of the groups that happened to be present at its unveiling. I changed that wording from the latter sense to the former as it makes this group more relevant to the topic, but I did not look for verification of this stronger claim. The "leave this in" fact you mention already is in the last sentence of my wording. Except for the "in an act of planned civil disobedience," phrase, since that sounded too fluffy and is not relevant here. There's a whole section earlier in the article about his act and motivation if users are interested. DMacks (talk) 18:45, 6 February 2010 (UTC)