Abstract
In the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court held that a Louisiana law requiring separate but equal accommodations on railroads for white and black passengers did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. By the time of the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy every Southern state except the Carolinas and Virginia had a separate coach law similar to Louisiana's. By 1900, every Southern state required racial separation of white and black passengers on railroads. Within another decade, what is widely called "Jim Crow" applied to every aspect of Southern public life. In moving "beyond Plessy," I use the term beyond in a chronological sense because I want to move the discussion into the Jim Crow era itself, but I also use "beyond" in a broader conceptual sense. It has been too easy to see Plessy as solely about the South and race relations within the South. I want to shift the discussion to another plane, to ask you to think of Jim Crow as a critical example of the emergence of the modem American state.
Recommended Citation
Welke, Barbara Y.
(2001)
"Beyond Plessy: Space, Status, and Race in the Era of Jim Crow,"
Utah Law Review: Vol. 2000:
No.
2, Article 5.
Available at:
https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol2000/iss2/5