Document 5.1.2: Excerpt from “Brief for Homer Plessy,” by Attorney Albion Tourgée, October term, 1895

Tourgée was a white writer and lawyer from the North who led Plessy’s suit all the way to the Supreme Court.  This is part of his argument before the Court. 

The evident effect of these provisions  (in the Fourteenth Amendment) taken alone and construed according to the plain and universal meaning of the terms employed, is to confer upon every person born or naturalized in the United states two things:

1) National Citizenship.

2) State citizenship, as an essential incident of national citizenship.

This grant of both a national and state citizenship in the constitution of the United States is a guarantee not only of equality of right but of all natural rights and the free enjoyment of all public privileges attaching to either state or national citizenship. Its effect is (1) to make national citizenship expressly paramount and universal; (2) to make state citizenship expressly subordinate and incidental to national citizenship

Source: Reprinted in Olsen, Otto H. The Thin Disguise: Turning Point in Negro History. Plessy v. Ferguson, a documentary presentation (1864-1896). New York: Humanities Press, 1967, pp. 103–108.