The Louisiana law’s actual purpose was race-based exclusion, not equal separation

Evidence

Justice Harlan called out the majority’s de-contextualized reasoning when it claimed the legislation treated both races equally. “Every one 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,” Harlan wrote, challenging his peers on the Court. “Railroad corporations of Louisiana did not make discrimination among whites in the matter of commodation [sic] for travelers. The thing to accomplish was, under the guise of giving equal accommodation for whites and blacks, to compel the latter to keep to themselves while traveling in railroad passenger coaches. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 389