Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Primary Source Document
Primary Source Document
civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved....
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 the equality 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 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 the freedom enjoyed by our people above all
other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with the 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 anyone, nor
atone for the wrong this day done....
I do not deems it necessary to review the decisions of state courts to which reference was made in argument.
Some, and the most important to them are wholly inapplicable, because rendered prior to the adoption of the
last amendments of the Constitution, when colored people had very few rights which the dominant race felt
obliged to respect. Others were made at a time when public opinion, in many localities was dominated by
the institution of slavery, when it would not have been safe to do justice to the black man; and when, so far
as the rights of blacks were concerned, race guides in the era introduced by the recent amendments of the
supreme law, which established universal freedom, gave citizenship to all born or naturalized in the Untied
States and residing here, obliterated the race line from our systems of governments, national and state, and
placed our free institutions upon the broad and sure foundation of the equality of all men before the law....
For the reasons state, I am constrained to withhold my assent from the opinion and judgment of the
majority.
Source: McKenna, George, ed. A Guide to the Constitution That Delicate Balance (New York, 1984), pp.
384-386.