8th Grade Social Studies @ NFS: Separate but Equal: My Man Langston, Plessy vs. Ferguson, & Executive Order 9981

“I, Too” by Langston Hughes (1925)

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.

Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

SOURCE: Langston Hughes, "I, Too," Collected Poems by Langston Hughes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).

Plessy vs. Ferguson

PBS has a terrific site titled The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow where we can learn about the landmark Supreme Court case, Plessy vs. Ferguson.

Click here for a quick video summarizing the significance of the case.

U.S. Supreme Court

PLESSY v. FERGUSON, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)

Justice Henry Brown delivered the majority opinion of the Court:

… The object of the [Fourteenth] amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but, in the nature of things, it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation, in places where they are liable to be brought into contact, do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which have been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of states where the political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced.…

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. …

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. …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.