The Minority Report of Plessy V. Ferguson

After reading Judge Harlan's, the judge of the Plessy V. Ferguson court case in 1896, dissent, it is clear that his dissent definitely sheds light on the path that law was to go in. He explains, "The destinies of the two races in this country are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law.", actively predicting the cultivation of said seeds if something were not to be done. And as predicted, these seeds were indeed cultivated even with civil rights movements to combat their growth, history seems to be repeating itself, such as history does, society displaying a sort of de facto equality-combatism.

This said, going back to the exact purpose of his clarifying dissent, I believe he wrote it in desire of disassociating himself with something he strongly disagreed with in his own judicially active opinion. Judge Harlan quite obviously felt the need to take it upon himself to elucidate his difference in opinion, possibly in full-knowledge that one day society would have changed into a more lawfully-equal place.

Continuing, as Judge Harlan's dissent explained, "Everyone knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons....Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." Personally I am shocked that a white citizen in a de jure racially-segregated society could have possibly thought this morally-futuristic. But going back to the content of what he said, I believe this to be indisputably truthful in that the constitution was not made for every American person.

Going off of that fact, in an organization I'm apart of here at High Point, Black Cultural Awareness, we've discussed the sad fact of America not being made for, designed for, or representative of black people, of us. And although this rings true, personally I'm pleasantly surprised that in a mere fifty years black Americans gained the amount of freedom as we have today considering the fifty years prior; and only 120 years ago, there existed some people, though few but still some, that were aware of the unjust and in their small ways, such as Judge Harlan, dissented it- and although a small action, this matters and means so much to me learning this now.