Unit
Years: 1896
Historical Events, Movements, and Figures
It is essential that students have prior knowledge of the Reconstruction time period, especially the Reconstruction amendments, before learning about Plessy v. Ferguson. Some familiarity with other landmark cases, such as the Dred Scott decision, will also be helpful prior knowledge to activate. Finally, discussions of race as a social construct–and a concept with no basis in biology–will also support conversations about segregation and Jim Crow definitions of race in this lesson.
By establishing the doctrine of “separate but equal,” the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) led to more than a half-century of legalized segregation and racial discrimination. Segregation stoked racial violence and was tangibly harmful for Black Americans and other people of color, who couldn’t access quality public services such as education and public transportation. And importantly, segregation was detrimental to all Americans, as both White citizens and people of color were deprived of the benefits of a truly diverse and integrated society.
Introduction
In 1896, the United States Supreme Court decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson established the doctrine of “separate but equal.” The majority opinion, authored by Associate Justice Henry B. Brown, declared that racial segregation in public spaces did not violate the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment so long as separate facilities provided for Black and White people were equal. In other words, segregation was legal and should not be considered innately discriminatory. This landmark ruling removed the last remaining legal protections of Reconstruction in the South, facilitated the creation of Jim Crow laws, and protected racial discrimination that would last for more than a half–century.
Reconstruction and the Fourteenth Amendment
After the Civil War’s end and during the Reconstruction period in the South, the federal government–led by the Republican Party–sought to grant full citizenship and emboldened civil rights to formerly enslaved people. A series of constitutional amendments and legislative acts guaranteed equal rights for Black Americans; the Thirteenth Amendment granted freedom from enslavement, the Fourteenth Amendment granted equal rights of citizenship to all Black Americans, and the Fifteenth Amendment granted suffrage for Black men. Importantly, former Confederate states were also required to write new state constitutions that endorsed the Fourteenth Amendment, thus recognizing Black people as lawful citizens and protecting citizens from unlawful discrimination.
White Southerners resisted all of these provisions. After 1877, when Reconstruction ended and federal troops were withdrawn, White leaders attempted to reestablish white supremacy through legal measures, economic coercion, and violence against Black people. The U.S. Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, handed down a series of decisions that weakened the power of the federal government to enforce civil rights laws, clearing the way for state and local governments to impose racially discriminatory practices and Jim Crow laws that restricted Black life on all fronts.
Black Resistance to Segregation in the Courts
Segregation did not come without resistance. Black Americans and White supporters of equal rights worked together in both the North and South to overturn segregation laws through campaigns in the press, as well as political and legal action. Black activists in Louisiana decided to create a test case of segregation laws, in part because Louisiana, which began as a French colony, had a long history of racial mingling. Many people in Louisiana were of mixed African and European descent and there was a long history of interracial association in public, making the absurd binary thinking behind segregation and the social construct of race especially evident.
Specifically, Black lawyers set out to challenge an 1890 Louisiana law that mandated segregation on passenger trains. The person chosen to sue was Homer Plessy, a light-skinned man whose heritage was ⅛ Black and ⅞ White, making him Black according to Louisiana law. Plessy purchased a first-class ticket and boarded the car reserved for White people, and officials arrested him when he refused to move to the Black-designated train car. Plessy’s case went to a local judge, John Howard Ferguson, who ruled that the state had the right to regulate train companies operating within Louisiana state lines, making federal protections for Black people irrelevant. Plessy’s attorneys appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. They argued that segregation laws on trains denied Black Americans their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed to all citizens “equal protection” under federal law. Furthermore, Plessy’s lawyers argued that the Louisiana law had violated the spirit of the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery, because it characterized and separated people by race alone.
The Supreme Court’s Ruling and Its Legacy
In the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson ruling of May 18, 1896, seven of eight justices of the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Judge Ferguson’s decision and ruled that states had the right to regulate train companies operating within state lines. The majority opinion asserted that state legislatures had the right to pass and uphold laws that reflect “established usages, customs and traditions.” In Louisiana, the Supreme Court maintained, the segregation of railway cars was an accepted custom in which both Black and White riders participated. As long as those services and accommodations were equal, they could be separate.
This decision, with its sweeping endorsement of segregation and its declaration of the principle of “separate but equal,” had far-reaching consequences. White authorities throughout the South enshrined Jim Crow into law, designating public schools, hospitals, buses, bathrooms, and other accommodations as restricted either to “Whites only” or to Black Americans, then known as “colored” people. The facilities provided for Black people were almost always inferior to those provided for White people, and sometimes accommodations for Black Americans did not even exist. Immediately following the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, Southern states withdrew funding for Black public schools and created a series of legal and social hurdles preventing Black citizens from exercising their right to vote, including literacy tests, poll taxes, and outright violence. Segregation also fueled racist stereotypes and served as legal justification for a reign of racial terror and violence against Black communities by White citizens and hate groups. For decades following this decision, a campaign of intimidation, violence, and lynching effectively repressed any attempts by Black Americans to assert and exercise their civil rights. Plessy v. Ferguson remained a stain on the Supreme Court’s record until it was overturned by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, and it is largely remembered as one of the worst decisions of the highest court of the United States.
Bishop, David W. “Plessy V. Ferguson: A Reinterpretation.” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 62, no. 2, 1977, pp. 125–33. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2717173. Accessed 8 June 2023.
Elliott, Mark. “Race, Color Blindness, and the Democratic Public: Albion W. Tourgée’s Radical Principles in Plessy v. Ferguson.” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 67, no. 2, 2001, pp. 287–330. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3069867. Accessed 8 June 2023.
Golub, Mark. “Plessy as ‘Passing’: Judicial Responses to Ambiguously Raced Bodies in Plessy v. Ferguson.” Law & Society Review, vol. 39, no. 3, 2005, pp. 563–600. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3557606. Accessed 8 June 2023.
Hull Hoffer, Williamjames. Plessy v. Ferguson: Race and Inequality in Jim Crow America. University of Kansas Press, 2012.
Kelley, Blair L. M. “Right to Ride: African American Citizenship and Protest in the Era of ‘Plessy v. Ferguson.’” African American Review, vol. 41, no. 2, 2007, pp. 347–56. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40027069. Accessed 8 June 2023.
Latham, Frank B. The Great Dissenter, John Marshall Harlan, 1833-1911. New York: Cowles Book Co., 1970.
Lipsitz, George. “From Plessy to Ferguson.” Cultural Critique, vol. 90, 2015, pp. 119–39. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5749/culturalcritique.90.2015.0119. Accessed 8 June 2023.
Olsen, Otto H. The Thin Disguise: Turning Point in Negro History. Plessy v. Ferguson, a documentary presentation (1864-1896). New York: Humanities Press, 1967.
“Plessy v. Ferguson.” National Archives, February 8, 2022, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/plessy-v-ferguson.
Thomas, Brook. Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997.
Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
In your students’ lifetime, enforced racial segregation has not been a predominant lived reality, and they may need some help to understand its profound implications. As needed, have a discussion to support their grasp of the concept, defining and modeling with vocabulary such as “exclusion, mandatory, enforced, controlling, stigmatizing,” and so forth. Help them, if needed, to distinguish between enforced separation from the outside and voluntary, short-term and self-selected forms of separation such as affinity groups or identity-based organizations that have a goal of autonomy or mutual support.
We recommend having a conversation with students about the ways in which the language we use about race has changed since Plessy v. Ferguson. Many primary documents of the Jim Crow time period contain references to “colored people,” which should be unpacked for students. It will be helpful to clarify that students should be mindful with language that they use to discuss the past, when terms differ from what is most appropriate to use today.
Reconstruction formally ended in 1877 with the removal of federal troops from the former Confederate states in the South–but the union was far from united. The federal Constitution now featured three new “Reconstruction Amendments” guaranteeing freedom from enslavement, the rights of citizenship for Black Americans, and suffrage for Black men, and the former Confederate states had agreed to accept these. Still, Southern states in this period quickly encoded racial segregation into their state laws. Under the so-called Jim Crow restrictions, Black Americans faced separate public accommodations–in schools, trains, buses, bathrooms, and more. In the eyes of the White majority, these restrictions marked Black people as inferior second-class citizens. The Jim Crow laws reinforced racism and fueled white supremacist campaigns of racial terror and violence against Black communities throughout the South.
Black lawyers in this period undertook a campaign to challenge these Jim Crow laws using the Fourteenth Amendment’s promise of “equal protection” as a basis. However, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with segregationists in the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896. The decision stated that “separate but equal” facilities were legal and constitutional. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision led to decades of legal segregation across the South, and in many parts of the North, limiting Black communities’ access to quality public accommodations and depriving all Americans of the promise of a truly diverse, integrated society.
Select the activities and sources you would like to include in the student view and click “Launch Student View.”
It is highly recommended that you review the Teaching Tips and sources before selecting the activities to best meet the needs and readiness of your students. Activities may utilize resources or primary sources that contain historical expressions of racism, outdated language or racial slurs.
First, have all students read the case overview for Plessy v. Ferguson from the Oyez Project website (external). Have a quick discussion to check for understanding of the case background and the majority decision. Ask the students the following questions:
Then, divide the students into three small groups to dig more deeply into the court’s decision. Give each group one of the following primary sources to read and analyze.
Each group should create a poster summarizing their primary source. The poster should contain the main idea of the source, an important quote or passage, and an explanation of why the source is valuable for historians.
Have groups share their posters with the class, and hold a closing discussion on the following questions:
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.
Excerpts from U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, May 18, 1896
We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that 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. The argument necessarily assumes that if, as has more than once been the case, and is not unlikely to be so again, the colored race should become the dominant power in the state legislature . . . it would thereby relegate the white race to an inferior position. We imagine that the white race at least would not necessarily acquiesce in this assumption. The argument also assumes that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other’s merits and a voluntary consent of individuals....Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane. . . .
The judgment of the court below is affirmed.
Document 5.1.3
Excerpts from Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, May 18, 1896 Justice Harlan was the lone dissenter in this case – an 8 to 1 decision.
In respect of civil rights, common to all citizens, the Constitution of the United States does not, I think, permit any public authority to know the race of those entitled to be protected in the enjoyment of such rights. Every true man has pride of race, and under appropriate circumstances when the rights of others, his equals before the law, are not to be affected, it is his privilege to express such pride and to take such action upon it as to him seems proper. But I deny that any legislative body or judicial tribunal may have regard to the race of citizens when the civil rights of those citizens are involved. Indeed, such legislation, as that here in question, is inconsistent not only with that equality of rights which pertains to citizenship, National and State, but with the personal liberty enjoyed by every one within the United States....
The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved. It is, therefore, to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a State to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race...
The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway [railroad], is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and equality before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal ground.
If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established for the benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race. We boast of freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow-citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of “equal” accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead any one, nor atone for the wrong this day done. . . .
For the reasons stated I am constrained to withhold my assent for the opinion and judgment of the majority.
Document 5.1.4
Explain that, in some ways, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision was about the relationship between federal and state governments. Begin by asking students: which level of government do you think should have more power to control our daily lives–federal or state? Why? (Consider giving one relevant example to ground this discussion, for instance federal vs. state laws regarding reproductive health care, or gay marriage prior to 2015.)
Now, have students break into small groups to research this tension between states’ rights and federal authority. Students should use the internet to find answers to the following questions:
Bring students back together to share their findings. End by having students write an individual reflection to the following prompt:
Write the three Reconstruction amendments (the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments) on posters and post them around the classroom. Have students walk around the room and visit each poster three times. With each round, they should answer one of the following questions on each poster. Allow students to choose which question they answer for each round to better differentiate for individual needs and interests.
Close by having a full class discussion on the following question:
Place students into pairs, and give each pair one of the following primary sources to read and analyze. Each source examines one or more effects of the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson decision on American society. (Note that the sources vary in their length and level of complexity, with consequences that are more and less concrete; do preview the source set and consider how to differentiate the activity for individual learners or your group as a whole.)
Students should use the OPCVL document analysis protocol to analyze their assigned source, and should prepare a short oral presentation to the class to summarize their analyses. After each pair shares their analysis, ask the class:
“A Strange Decision,” Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York), May 20, 1896
The supreme court of the United States has decided that the law of Louisiana requiring the railroads of that state to provide separate cars for white and colored passengers is constitutional. The majority of the court seems to have reasoned by analogy, assuming that if the laws of congress requiring separate schools for the two races is constitutional, therefore the laws requiring separate cars likewise comes under the protection of the fundamental national law.
Justice Harlan’s vigorous dissent denouncing these laws as mischievous comes very much nearer the sentiment of the American people upon that question than the decision of the majority does. Justice Harlan says with entire truth that it would be just as reasonable for the states to pass laws requiring separate cars for Protestants and Catholics or for descendants of those of the Teutonic race and those of the Latin race.
The announcement of this decision will be received by thoughtful and fair-minded people with disapproval and regret. It is not in harmony with the principles of this republic or with the spirit of out time. It is a concession to one of the lowest and meanest prejudices to which the human mind is liable, the prejudice which draws a line between citizens and discriminates against people of a specified race and color. It puts the official stamp of the highest court in the country upon the miserable doctrine that several millions of American citizens are of an inferior race and unfit to mingle with citizens of other races.
The certain consequences of this decision will be to encourage Southern legislatures in passing other laws detrimental to the interests of the colored people of those states. Florida has a law which makes the teaching of white and colored children together in schools a crime. Under that law recently several Northern gentlemen and ladies constituting the faculty of an admirable Congregational school at Orange Park, an institution supported by the National Congregational Association, were arrested and held for trial. If there is any ground for the supreme court decision in the railroad case there seems to be no doubt that these black laws of the Southern states regarding schools would also be sustained by that tribunal. In that case the large educational interests of the religious denominations, chiefly supported by Northern contributions and unselfish services, would be seriously affected.
This question came before the Methodist General Conference on May 9th and strong resolutions condemning the Florida law were unanimously adopted without reference to a committee. In Georgia a short time ago an attempt was made to enact a similar law, but fortunately the public sentiment of that state appeared to be too enlightened to support the movement and the bill failed.
Source: Reprinted in Brook, Thomas, ed. Plessy V. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents. Boston, MA: Bedford Books, 1997.
Document 5.1.5
This activity is built around two responses to the Plessy decision by leading African American intellectuals and brilliant writers of the era: Booker T. Washington and Charles Chesnutt. Although both objected strenuously to Plessy, their responses vary greatly in tone, argumentation, and rhetorical device. Begin by having students read and annotate both sources; a dramatic read-aloud would be an effective launch for this activity, or use any close-reading strategy of your choice. Next, using the whiteboard, help students notate on a Venn diagram the points on which the two men agree (noted in a circle in the middle) and in separate circles, the points where they differ. After, lead a more general discussion of the two sources. Some discussion prompts include:
Close by discussing this question as a full class (or ask students to journal about it):
“Who is Permanently Hurt?” by Booker T. Washington, Boston Our Day, June 1896
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) is best known for his belief in a practical, work-based education for African Americans in the decades following the end of Reconstruction. Appointed the first principal of Tuskegee Institute in 1881, he guided the growth of the school so that by 1890, it trained five hundred African American boys and girls each year. Washington believed that if African Americans could improve their economic status, civil rights would follow. In time, his accommodating approach toward white people increasingly separated him from leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois.
The United States Supreme Court has recently handed down a decision declaring the separate coach law, or “Jim Crow” car law constitutional. What does this mean? Simply that the separation of colored and white passengers as now practiced in certain Southern states is lawful and constitutional.
This separation may be good law, but it is not good common sense. The difference in the color of the skin is a matter for which nature is responsible. If the Supreme Court can say that it is lawful to compel all persons with black skins to ride in one car, and all with white skins to ride in another, why may it not say that it is lawful to put all yellow people in one car and all white people, whose skin is sun burnt, in another car. Nature has given both their color; or why cannot the courts go further and decide that all men with bald heads must ride in one car and all with red hair still in another. Nature is responsible for all these conditions.
But the colored people do not complain so much of the separation, as of the fact that the accommodations, with almost no exceptions, are not equal, still the same price is charged the colored passengers as is charged the white people.
Now the point of all this article is not to make a complaint against the white man or the “Jim Crow Car” law, but it is simply to say that such an unjust law injures the white man and inconveniences the negro. No race can wrong another race simply because it has the power to do so, without being permanently injured in morals, and its ideas of justice.
The negro can endure the temporary inconvenience, but the injury to the white man is permanent. It is the one who inflicts the wrong that is hurt, rather than the one on whom the wrong is inflicted. It is for the white man to save himself from the degradation that I plead.
If a white man steals a negro’s ballot, it is the white man who is permanently injured.
Physical death comes to the negro lynched—death of the morals—death of the soul— comes to the white man who perpetrates the lynching.
Source: Reprinted in Thomas, Brook, ed. Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford Books. 1997.
Document 5.1.6
Excerpts from “The Courts and the Negro,” a speech by Charles Chesnutt, 1911
Charles Chesnutt (1858–1932) was the best known African American fiction writing or his time. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, to parents who were free blacks before the Civil War, he lived in North Carolina and witnessed first hand Reconstruction and its end. He returned to Cleveland in 1884, studied law, passed the bar exam, and began working as a legal stenographer. He had already begun writing, and in time had three novels published, many short stories, and a biography of Frederick Douglass. Chesnutt gave this speech after he abandoned his literary career. In the speech, he draws on his legal background to give a concise history of how Supreme Court rulings have affected African Americans.
[T]o my mind the most important and far reaching decision of the Supreme Court upon the question of civil rights is that in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, a case which came up from Louisiana in 1895. (163 U.S., 537.) The opinion is a clear and a definite approval of the recognition by State laws, of color distinctions, something which had theretofore been avoided in civil rights cases. It establishes racial caste in the United States as firmly as though it were established by act of Congress. To the opinion Mr. Justice Harlan dissented with his usual vigor, and Justice Brewer did not hear the argument or participate in the decision. The Court cited the passage quoted by me from a former decision:
The Fourteenth Amendment was ordained to secure equal rights to all persons, and extends its protection to races and classes, and prohibits any State legislation which has the effect of denying to any race or class, or to any individual, the equal protection of the laws, and made the rights of the two races exactly the same.
And then the Court stabbed in the back, and to death, this ideal presentment of rights, and threw its bleeding corpse to the Negro,—the comprehensive Negro, black, brown, yellow, and white—the plaintiff in that case, which involved the separate car law in Louisiana, was seven-eighths white and showed no sign of darker blood—as that court’s definition of his civil status:…
When it was suggested in the argument that to sustain such discrimination laws might justify separate cars for people with red hair or aliens, or require people to walk on different sides of the street, or require colored men’s houses to be in separate blocks, the Court in the opinion, said that such regulations must be reasonable. And the Court held:
In determining the question of reasonableness, it is at liberty to act with reference to the usages, customs, and traditions of the people, with a view to the promotion of their comfort and the preservation of the public peace and good order.
It is obvious where this leaves the Negro, and it is difficult to see where the Fourteenth Amendment has any application.
The opinion in Plessy vs. Ferguson is, in my mind, as epoch-making as the Dred Scott decision. Unfortunately, it applies to a class of rights which do not make the heart and conscience of the nation the same direct appeal as was made by slavery, and has not been nor is it likely to produce any such revulsion of feeling.
Another extract from the opinion makes one wonder whether the Court was merely playing with the subject:
We consider the underlying failure of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the races stamps the colored race with the badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act itself, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.
I presume that hanging might be pleasant if a man could only convince himself that it would not be painful, nor disgraceful, nor terminate his earthly career. It is perhaps true that some Negroes—I suspect very few people of mixed blood—have seemed to accept this reasoning. But I have never been able to see how a self-respecting colored man can approve of any discriminating legislation.
To do so is to condone his own degradation, and accept an inferior citizenship. If discrimination must of necessity be submitted to, it should meet no better reception than silence. Protest were better still.
I need not suggest the far-reaching effect of this decision. The colored people of the South have been, it would seem, as completely segregated as the business of daily life will permit. Perhaps the lowest depths of race hatred have not been sounded, but a more humiliating, insulting, and degrading system is hardly conceivable under even a nominally free government. Under Plessy v. Ferguson there is no reason why any northern State may not reproduce in its own borders the conditions in Alabama and Georgia. And it may be that the Negro and his friends will have to exert themselves to save his rights at the North….
Source: Original copies of the speech are at The Charles W. Chesnutt collection at the Fisk University library. Published in Thomas, Brook. ed. Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997.
Document 5.1.7
End with a timeline activity to help students place the Plessy decision into a broader historical context and review the key themes from the lesson. Place students into small groups, and give each group the following list of key events. (Note that this list is out of chronological order. The list can also be shortened for purposes of time or differentiation.)
Have students work together to place the events into chronological order. They can look up these terms using the website BlackPast.org or another searchable historical database. Students can make their timeline on a poster or using software such as Canva or Google Jamboard. For each event, the students should write the date, a description of the event, and an explanation of its importance.
End with a class discussion to summarize the lesson.
Place students into small groups, and assign each small group a Supreme Court case that is in some way related to Plessy v. Ferguson. Consider the following cases as options, and add others that relate to the themes of your particular class:
Each small group should create a 10 minute oral presentation about their case, which they should share with the full class. The presentation should be based on research and include the following components:
Hold a class discussion after all presentations to discuss the overall legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson and the following key question:
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