John Marshall Harlan, Dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
John Marshall Harlan, a lawyer and considered one of the greatest Supreme Court Justices to serve, was a key figure in the Plessy v. Ferguson case. He was born into a rich slave holding family June 1, 1833 in Frankfurt, Kentucky. Being born into a rich slave holding family allowed him to have quick political success. He also supported the Union during the Civil War and served in the war, creating the 10th Kentucky Infantry. After the war, he was elected to the Attorney General of Kentucky where he served until 1867. In the 1867 elections, Rutherford B. Hayes was elected and appointed Harlan to the Supreme Court. As an associative to the Supreme Court Justice, he quickly became entangled with cases like the Plessy v. Ferguson case where he shared his dissenting viewpoints towards racial segregation.
The Plessy v. Ferguson case sprouted from Homer Plessy, an African American, refusing to get off a train car deemed for Whites only. Homer argued that his arrest for sitting on a Whites only train car was unconstitutional as he argued that it violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The equal protection clause states that everyone has equal protection under the law. Homer Plessy saw this being violated as he should not have been required to give up any public right or access. However, the Supreme Court disagreed and claimed that the law that segregated Blacks and Whites on train cars was constitutional as the law did not give any advantages to one race over the other. This ultimately ended up in the Supreme Court deciding to rule the case against Homer Plessy. However, John Marshall Harlan was the one Supreme Court judge that voted against this 7 to 1 ruling.
John Marshall Harlan’s ruling in favor of Homer Plessy stemmed from his belief that “all citizens are equal under the law” and having separate train cars for two different races totally went against this belief. John Marshall Harlan also stated that the decision would “poison relations between races”. If Whites and Blacks were already not pitted enough against each other at this time period, adding another level of segregation in train cars would cause more distrust and hatred between the races. These brave arguments for the civil rights of African Americans remarks help lead to his title as “The Great Dissenter”. Yet, Harlan’s ideas on racial segregation were not forgotten as his defense of the civil rights of African Americans in the Plessy v. Ferguson case remained prominent. His ideas actually ended up inspiring later Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
I think it's also important to take note of the many other cases regarding racial equality in which Harlan dissented, such as United States v. Harris, The Civil Rights Cases of 1883, and Berea College v. Kentucky. In United States v. Harris, the legitimacy of the Force Act of 1871 was called into question, with the Court ultimately deciding that the 14th Amendment only applied to states, not individuals. A similar ruling was made in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, where the Court ruled that discriminatory acts by private parties were legal. In Berea College v. Kentucky, however, Berea College, a desegregated school, challenged the Day Law, a law passed by the Kentucky legislature that prohibited the teaching of both blacks and whites in the same school. Although Harlan argued in support of Berea College, the Court ultimately ruled in favor of the state. Despite having lost the vote in all three of these cases, Harlan's dissenting opinions greatly influenced later rulings in favor of racial equality.
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