In this landmark case the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. In 1892, in a Louisiana court, Homer Plessy filed a petition against John H Ferguson, that his constitutional rights were violated because he was denied seating on a train in a “whites only” area. The court rejected his argument based on then current laws implying a distinction between whites and blacks was not unconstitutional. Justice Henry B. Brown wrote, “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.”
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