Jackson Lennock
Well-known member
Plessy v. Ferguson is known for the Separate but Equal Doctrine. But Homer Plessy actually made two other arguments too - (1) that he was deprived of his legal right to be a white man and (2) Louisiana improperly gave governmental power to define somebody's race to the train car authorities.
Confused? Homer Plessy was 7/8 White in ancestry. It was because of this that he was a very useful plaintiff in what was a test case put together by civil rights advocates and the railroad (the railroads disliked segregation because it required having more train cars, which cost money). In all likelihood, had the railroad not been aware of Plessy's racial status, he could have sat in the White Car without incident. The legal strategy was to play on the ambiguities of race to take down the Louisiana law.
Plessy couldn't win on equality grounds, but could he win on ambiguity grounds? Harlan would still write his famous opinion, but the opinion ends up being a defense of the rights of mixed-race persons. As a practical matter, it would make segregation more of a pain for the Southern States to have in place.
One interesting cultural knock-on is that with the rise of segregation, the number of people identifying as "mulatto" or some other funky word like that declined significantly in the US. Segregation made things black and white (pun not intended).
Confused? Homer Plessy was 7/8 White in ancestry. It was because of this that he was a very useful plaintiff in what was a test case put together by civil rights advocates and the railroad (the railroads disliked segregation because it required having more train cars, which cost money). In all likelihood, had the railroad not been aware of Plessy's racial status, he could have sat in the White Car without incident. The legal strategy was to play on the ambiguities of race to take down the Louisiana law.
Plessy couldn't win on equality grounds, but could he win on ambiguity grounds? Harlan would still write his famous opinion, but the opinion ends up being a defense of the rights of mixed-race persons. As a practical matter, it would make segregation more of a pain for the Southern States to have in place.
One interesting cultural knock-on is that with the rise of segregation, the number of people identifying as "mulatto" or some other funky word like that declined significantly in the US. Segregation made things black and white (pun not intended).