The Supreme Court approved Jim Crow segregation months after Washington’s compromise

Evidence

On May 18, 1896, the Court ruled 7–1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that Louisiana’s Separate Car Act—and other new Jim Crow laws—violated neither the Thirteenth nor the Fourteenth Amendments. The biracial Homer Plessy had challenged the law requiring Louisiana railroads to provide “equal but separate accommodations” for White and Black passengers. New Orleans judge John H. Ferguson had claimed that the “foul odors of blacks in close quarters” made the law reasonable. The Louisiana Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court upheld Ferguson’s ruling. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 735

Categorization

• XREF: This is a textbook example for testing the reader’s core question — did the Court’s segregation policy follow from racist ideas, or did the ideas (Washington’s compromise, Ferguson’s odor claims) serve to justify a policy already in motion? Fits directly into the causal-inversion test. — connects to: Segregating a hearing room mirrors the Jim Crow bus seating regime — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 76