From Plessy v.

« 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 abadge 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.

Theargument necessarily assumes that if, as has been more than once the case and is not unlikely to be so again, the colored race should become the dominant power inthe state legislature, and should enact a law in precisely similar terms, it would thereby relegate the white race to an inferior position.

We imagine that the white race,at least, would not acquiesce in this assumption.

The argument also assumes that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot besecured 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 socialequality, 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 accentuatingthe 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 beinferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane. The judgment of the court below is, therefore, Affirmed. Mr.

Justice Harlan, dissenting. …While there may be in Louisiana persons of different races who are not citizens of the United States, the words in the act 'white and colored races' necessarilyinclude all citizens of the United States of both races residing in that State.

So that we have before us a state enactment that compels, under penalties, the separationof the two races in railroad passenger coaches, and makes it a crime for a citizen of either race to enter a coach that has been assigned to citizens of the other race.… However apparent the injustice of such legislation may be, we have only to consider whether it is consistent with the Constitution of the United States.… 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 entitledto 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 beforethe law, are not to be affected, it is his privilege to express such pride and to take such action based upon it as to him seems proper.

But I deny that any legislativebody 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 isinconsistent not only with that equality of rights which pertains to citizenship, National and State, but with the personal liberty enjoyed by everyone within the UnitedStates.… It is one thing for railroad carriers to furnish, or to be required by law to furnish, equal accommodations for all whom they are under a legal duty to carry.

It is quiteanother thing for government to forbid citizens of the white and black races from traveling in the same public conveyance, and to punish officers of railroadcompanies for permitting persons of the two races to occupy the same passenger coach.

If a State can prescribe, as a rule of civil conduct, that whites and blacks shallnot travel as passengers in the same railroad coach, why may it not so regulate the use of the streets of its cities and towns as to compel white citizens to keep on oneside of a street and black citizens to keep on the other? Why may it not, upon like grounds, punish whites and blacks who ride together in streetcars or in openvehicles on a public road or street?… Further, if this statute of Louisiana is consistent with the personal liberty of citizens, why may not the State require theseparation in railroad coaches of native and naturalized citizens of the United States, or of Protestants and Roman Catholics?… 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 … But in view ofthe 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 of 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 Stateto regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race. In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott Case .

It was adjudged in that case that the descendants of Africans who were imported into this country and sold as slaves were not included nor intended to be included underthe word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and could not claim any of the rights and privileges which that instrument provided for and secured to citizens of the UnitedStates; that, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, they were “considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by thedominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and thegovernment might choose to grant them.” The recent amendments of the Constitution, it was supposed, had eradicated these principles from our institutions.

But it seems that we have yet, in some of theStates, a dominant race—a superior class of citizens, which assumes to regulate the enjoyment of civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race.

Thepresent decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, butwill encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view whenthey adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution, by one of which the blacks of this country were made citizens of the United States and of the States in whichthey respectively reside, and whose privileges and immunities, as citizens, the States are forbidden to abridge.

Sixty millions of whites are in no danger from thepresence here of eight millions of blacks.

The destinies of the two races in this country are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that thecommon government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law.

What can more certainly arouse race hate, what morecertainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are soinferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens.

That, as all will admit, is the real meaning of such legislation aswas enacted in Louisiana.… The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race while they are on a public highway is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and theequality before the law established by the Constitution.

It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds. 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 surelycome from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race.

We boast of the 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 fellowcitizens, our equals before the law.

The thin disguise of 'equal' accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrongthis day done.… I am of opinion that the statute of Louisiana is inconsistent with the personal liberty of citizens, white and black, in that State, and hostile to both the spirit and letterof the Constitution of the United States.

If laws of like character should be enacted in the several States of the Union, the effect would be in the highest degreemischievous.

Slavery, as an institution tolerated by law would, it is true, have disappeared from our country, but there would remain a power in the States, by sinisterlegislation, to interfere with the full enjoyment of the blessings of freedom to regulate civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race, and to place in a. »