American History Hit - Plessy v. Ferguson: The Supreme Court Case That Enshrined Jim Crow

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

In 1896 the Supreme Court ruled that Jim Crow segregation laws were not unconstitutional in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. This is the case that Brown v. Board of Education would eventually overturn but not until six decades of Jim Crow laws had been endured. Who was Plessy? Who was Ferguson? And how on earth did the Supreme Court reach its conclusions?Don Wildman's guest today is Dr Michael Ross, historian of constitutional history with a focus on Reconstruction era at the University of Maryland.Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Produced by Freddy Chick and Tomos Delargy.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. The East Louisiana Railroad number eight pulls out of New Orleans Press Street Depot and moves out of town. It's 1892 and inside a first-class White's only car, Homer Plessy sits waiting.

He knows exactly what is about to happen. For a minute or two, Plessy gazes out the window at stacked cotton bales, warehouses, and chimneys, billowing smoke from the city's cotton presses. Then, right on cue, the conductor approaches him. asking of Plessy, are you a colored man? Yes, Plessy replies calmly. The conductor orders him to the colored car. Plessy refuses to go. And moments later, the train comes to a screeching halt as Plessy is arrested,

setting into motion, one of the most pivotal cases in American Supreme Court history. Hello all, welcome to another episode of American History Hit. I'm Don Wilden, your host. Thanks for joining us. By the 1890s, the hopes of Rearrow, Reconstruction in the American South were hanging by a thread. When the United States Supreme Court took up the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, it was meant to be a chance for the court to pull things back from the brink. In fact, it had the opposite effect.

It became the official enshrinement of Jim Crow laws. Today we tell one of the darkest stories of Supreme Court history. And we do it with Michael Ross, professor of constitutional history at the University of Maryland. He is the author of celebrated books, including the Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case, and Justice of Shattered Dreams, Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court of the Civil War era. He's also the associate editor of the Journal of Supreme Court history. Professor Ross, Michael, thanks for joining us. Nice to be here.

Let's first talk about the man who is the title of this episode and the title of this case, Plessy v. Ferguson. He's the plaintiff. Tell me about the man. Who was Homer Plessy? Homer Plessy is a young man. He's in his 20s. He is a shoemaker who lives in the famous Afro-Creal neighborhood of New Orleans, the Tramay. And he is associated with a group called the Committee of Citizens who have organized to litigate against Louisiana's efforts to mandate separate facilities in public accommodations.

He is a Afro-Creol. He comes out of the francophone tradition of New Orleans. He and his colleagues are descended from free persons of color before the Civil War, who are an elite group of poets and writers and musicians and well-educated bilingual people who had known some limited civil rights before the Civil War had experienced the heady days of the possibility during Reconstruction and were now outraged that the state government of Louisiana was attempting to restore a caste system in their state and in the American South. Exactly. It's very important to consider his past and his family's past in that his mother and father were both, I guess officially, it would be the right word, free persons of color,

Creole prior to the Civil War, then the Civil War happens, and along come the Black Codes, a lot of this has to do with chronology of these events, which will go over several different times in this conversation. And it's awkward, of course, today to talk about in these terms, but Plessy's skin color mattered at the time. He was a very light-skinned person. This would have mattered in the telling of this story, right? It absolutely matters. Many of the free persons of color were of mixed race heritage or mulatto, a term used in the 19th century. They had, their families had included, you know, white French-speaking gentlemen, educated white women at times. And Homer Plessy, although in the

documents they're going to say he is seven-eighths white, really it's a more complicated story than that. But they were making a point that the Louisiana law said that what had to happen is that conductors on railroads would have to patrol the cars determining who was white and who was black and move any black passenger who was sitting in one of the white cars into the black cars. And in Louisiana where there's all kinds of permutations of color and not just amongst mixed race people, but there's a large number of Sicilian immigrants. It's a place where skin tone was not particularly revealing of what race or heritage you were. The plaintiffs, Homer Plessy and the Committee of Citizens, are arguing that not only is this law largely unenforceable, but it places the railroad and the railroad conductors in an untenable position of being the ones who officially declare for the state who's white and who's black.

We're going to talk about a lot of intentionality here. There's a lot of deliberate actions that happen as a result of that might be very surprising to people it was to me just to review it. He has chosen to be involved in this case. And that skips one second. That is this is a chosen case to stage, which is very important to understand who chooses him to be involved in this case and how long had they been confronting this law? So, Plessy v. Ferguson is a test case. It is. is manufactured in the sense that, although these kind of incidents were happening all the time, they deliberately chose Placie, the Committee of Citizens, which is the Civil Rights Legal Activist Group, who organized to challenge the law. They had notified the railroad that they were going to do this. The railroads hated these laws because it meant they had to provide separate cars for the two races, very expensive, made them legally liable for enforcing it. They'd notified the railroad that they were going to do it. They had deliberately hired a police detective

to be on the train so that when Plessy boards the train at New Orleans Press Street Station, they only go a short distance when the conductor who knows what's going on goes up to Plessy and says, are you a white man? And he says, no, I'm not. And he says, well, you have to move. And Plessy says, I refuse. And the conductor says, stop the train. The detective who's in the car and knows this is happening, jumps up and says, I'm going to arrest him. They pull Plessy off the train, take him down to the recorder's court. The detective swears out an affidavit in the case of Homer v. Plessy v. Ferguson is born.

And it is a test case. They want him to be arrested so that they can file for a writ of habeas corpus saying the Louisiana law is unconstitutional, get the case to federal court, and if all goes well, get the case to the United States Supreme Court, where they hope the justices there will use the 13th and 14th amendments to undo a series of laws being passed in the South that are going to force separate accommodations in railroads, theaters, restaurants, and everywhere else. Yeah, the law we're talking about is passed in 1890. It's called the Separate Car Act. And this was like many of these sort of laws that were passed across the South.

This is in Louisiana. It's a Louisiana state law. And it, of course, mandates that people of color have to sit in a different car. Interesting. We'll talk about this some more subtlety. But the railroads hated this idea. It was a bad business. It was terrible for business.

They had to add cars and manage a whole situation they didn't care to do. And just a few decades before, when railroads were just starting, it was fine. You know, people got on and rode wherever they could afford to sit. Now everything's different. Tell me about the Committee of Citizens. I'm going to try my French. Committee de Sittion. Yes. Again, they are a group of Afro-Creal men. They come out of this intellectual and ideological tradition in New Orleans. And they are people who have the economic means to challenge this law and are people who particularly chafed at it. Because, they had this long tradition of considering themselves amongst the best men of New Orleans. They're polished, they're smart, and they hated the fact that everywhere they went, they always had to consider whether they could go because they were of mixed race. And they are folks who had known the moment of possibility in New Orleans.

There's a moment during Reconstruction where around 1860s. you have African Americans being elected to political office, you have African Americans serving on juries, as policemen, black detectives solving high-profile crimes, and it just looks like things are going to change. As Arnold Bertano, one of these civil rights activists would famously say, we opened our hearts to hope. It seemed to us that we were given new life, and we began to make some beautiful dreams. And then Reconstruction, for myriad reasons, collapses. And as Reconstruction fades, the old Confederates, the old White South becomes emboldened

and decides that they are going to, through law, attempt to reestablish a caste system in the South. And the Committee of Citizens were people who said, we are not going to stand for this. This test case might not turn out the way we wanted to, but we're not going to just lay down and say, let's make the best of this new reactionary world. So June 7, 1892, two years after the Separate Car Act has been instated, Homer Plessy deliberately sits in the White's only carriage on the East Louisiana Railroad, leaving Press Street Depot bound for Covington, Louisiana. Very important that this happens within Louisiana and not elsewhere. It doesn't go over state lines.

It has to be within the state, not interstate. So you've mentioned this already. But take us through the events just because it's important to understand how stage this really was. He sits down. The train begins. And then there's two individuals who are involved in moving him from that car, right? Yes. It is.

Everyone knows what's going to happen. The railroad knows, the conductor knows, the detective, the white detective who's sitting in the first class car knows. And they all know that what's going to happen is the train's going to go a short distance. The conductor is going to patrol the cars as they were required to do by law and ask people who they suspected of being black if they were and were sitting inappropriately in the white car. Now, Homer Plessy could have very easily passed as white, but that's not his goal. And the conductor asked him, are you a white man? And he says, no, I'm colored. And that sets off the events.

Conductor says, you're going to have to move. Plus, he says, no, they stop the train. The detective jumps up, says, I've seen all this. I'm arresting him, takes him down to the recorders court and swears out an affidavit against. Right. To promote the comfort of the passengers. So says the Separate Car Act. The law is part of, I've already mentioned, this consolidation of,

laws throughout the southern states that has been made possible by the collapse of reconstruction. The federal government passed, of course, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which dealt with the Black codes, then Grant and the new Justice Department deal with the Ku Klux Klan and all the rise of all that violence that happens all the way through to 1877. A lot of this has to do with an election that we covered, the Rutherberg-B-Hays election, which was so controversial in 1876, which results in the withdrawal of federal troops to settle all that down. That means there's no enforcement for what had been so difficult to enforce in the first place. Which brings us to the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which mandated public access to accommodations,

railroads being one. So how does that square with this situation, which is going to come more than a decade later? As Reconstruction is failing, the Republicans who are being, voted out of office in particular because a wave of anger that they're in charge as the economy collapses during a great economic panic of 1873, leading to the longest depression in American history. The Republicans are the ones who are committed to black rights in the south. And as Reconstruction is collapsing, they have a lame duck Congress. And they're like, Dan, we're going to pass one law that's going to try to stave off what we see.

coming, and it's the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guarantees equal access to public accommodations, any business licensed by a state, and to jury service. And they justify the law saying it's authorized by the powers given to Congress by the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery, and by the 14th Amendment, which says no state can deny citizens equal protection of the laws, or due process, et cetera. And they say, because businesses are licensed by the state, that's state action. So a state that allows businesses to discriminate is violating the 14th Amendment. And the Civil Rights Act is passed, but then the Democrats come into the next Congress, they take over. They're not committed to enforcing it. And then once Reconstruction ends,

the Civil Rights Act of 1875 is somewhat ignored. And it's that law that they hope in particular will be used to challenge the Separate Car Act. However, there is an intervening Supreme Court decision, also quite famous, the 1883 civil rights cases. And the 1883 civil rights cases are brought by businessmen in the north, in the south, in the west, who did not like the fact that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 forced them to admit on equal terms black patrons. And they sue saying that this is a private business. The federal government, whatever the 13th and 14th Amendment says,

doesn't have the authority to reach private businesses. In these cases, they consolidate into the civil. rights cases of 1883. And in that decision, the Supreme Court, in an eight to one vote, agrees. And they say that the language of the 14th Amendment says no state can deny equal protection. No state can deny due process rights. However, businesses aren't the state. And in an opinion by Justice Joseph Bradley, they say, at some point, African, Americans freed from slavery have to stop being the special favorites of the law. And the one dissenter in that case is one of the most fascinating pieces of the Plessy story.

And it's the dissenting justice John Marshall Harlan. And Harlan is also going to dissent in the Plessy decision. And Harlan is fascinating because he comes from a slave-owning family in Kentucky. He is a Kentucky unionist in that his family does not join the Confederacy, as some people in Kentucky did. As you know, Kentucky tries to remain neutral in the war. He fights in the Union Army, but initially he's saying, I'm just fighting to save the Union as it is. I'm opposed to the Emancipation Proclamation. I'm opposed to voting rights for African Americans.

And then something happens to him during Reconstruction. when he sees the ferocity of the opposition and the violence being used in the South against African Americans trying to claim equal rights and his position shifts. And he starts to say, you know what, I'm either going to be part of the past or I'm going to be part of the future. And he will dissent in the civil rights cases and say, what we know is that businesses that don't admit all customers are perpetuating the legacies of slavery. They're really doing something that perpetuates, as he calls it, the badges of slavery and the legacy of that institution that the 13th Amendment was meant to get rid of. And licensed businesses are approved by the state.

And if they're doing it, it's state action. And he says, you can hardly, based on the history of America, and including what's happened since the Civil War, say that African Americans have been these special favorites of the law. Yeah, sure. And it's a ringing dissent, but it's a dissent. And as a result of the civil rights cases, you have this principle out there that the federal government can't reach private businesses. And that's going to-

But what's interesting about the Plessy case is that the law that Louisiana passes, we're going to still have this principle that private businesses can do what they want, but now they're being told they have to separate their customers, and the railroads in particular don't like it. They're chafing at the fact that the state is telling them what they have to do. I'm sort of stuck on the confusion about the Supreme Court. This is a court that has been through many of these justices have been through all these major changes over the last 20 years, right? I mean, we're not talking about a new batch of guys that come in in the 1870s. That is true.

By 1883, it's still largely justices appointed by Lincoln and Grant, et cetera. And, but what you're seeing by the 1880s is an increasing attempt amongst some Republicans who say, yes, we're committed to African Americans getting a fair shake. But at the same time, we have the system of federalism where we can't tell the states too much what to do and we need to all start to kind of reconcile and get along the north and the south and take a slightly more hands-off approach and we'll trust the southern governments that are now back in the control largely of white politicians to be generous and treat blacks fairly. And that sense is only going to increase as we head into the 1890s by the time we get to Plessy.

And by the time we get to Plessy, it's a whole new generation of justices, except for a few folks clinging on. It is the sons. It's that next generation that's on the court. And they increasingly are buying into this idea that the north and south needs to shake hands over the bloody chasm. And one of the ways we're going to do that is let the South handle their own racial affairs. So it's a chosen, it's a conscious act of putting the blind. on, isn't it? It certainly is.

Because some of these folks, they're, you know, in their heart of hearts, they want African Americans to receive a fair shake. But at the same time, they don't want the constant North, South anger to continue. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. Let's talk about the name, Plessy versus Ferguson. We now know who Plessy is. Who is Ferguson? Ferguson is a Yankee. He is a judge in Louisiana. He's one of many northern transplants in New Orleans. He's originally from Martha's Vineyard, but he's a Democrat. And he is on the side of the state government that is now trying to segregate the society. And he is going to, at the lower court level, uphold the law and argued that Plessy was duly arrested. And it's because they are,

filing a writ of error arguing that he gets it wrong as it goes up to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which is going to affirm his decision, that his name becomes famously attached to the case. So Plessy v. Ferguson, he's the judge that says this law is okay. And this is a case that's tried, first of all, in the criminal district court in the parish of Orleans, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Just to repeat, Judge John Howard Ferguson oversees this case. This is always the plan that it would be taken into the lower courts and then moved up, right? He's doing exactly what they want him to do. They do not want him to side with Plessy. They want to lose so that they can get to the case to the Supreme Court who can decide,

if all goes well, that these laws mandating separate cars, separate but equal cars, are unconstitutional under the 13th and 14th amendments. Was he also? aware of his role in this, or he must have known this was all a staged thing? He does know it's a stage thing, and he's aware of what he's doing, but of course, they want to uphold these laws. So he is doing what the Democrats want. They want the laws upheld, and they're confident that if it gets to the Supreme Court, they'll win. Plessy side is argued by Albion Tourget. Tell me about that man.

Yeah, Torgette is a fascinating figure. He is a, Union Army veteran who has kind of a mixed career in the Civil War. He gets injured by a carriage as he's retreating at the Battle of Bull Run. He's later taken as a POW while foraging outside of Murfreesboro. But after the war, he is a proud carpetbagger. He's fine with the term as someone is going to go to the South and try to bring about a new day there. And he He'll be a federal judge during Reconstruction and very pro the aims of Reconstruction. And he faces throughout his life lots of death threats and threats of violence. But he is going to, after Reconstruction fails, write a famous novel called A Fool's Errant,

a novel about the Reconstruction South, initially published anonymously by one of the fools. But the book becomes a sensation in the North. sells hundreds of thousands of copies. People see it as the Uncle Tom's cabin of Reconstruction, and it's people who want to find out what went wrong. Why did the Republican policy not work? And Torget's argument in this novel is essentially that they gave up too quickly. They put too much faith that just voting rights could bring about change, that they needed massive federal spending for education. He'll have the ear of James Garfield, but then Garfield gets assassinated. And when the time when the Plessy case comes about, Torge is writing a very

influential column in a Chicago newspaper called The Bystander, where he's writing about race relations all the time. He uses that column to form his own national civil rights organization, and the committee of citizens are writing to him about strategy. What should we do here? and eventually as he learns the test case are underway, he volunteers to join the legal team. And he and Louis Mardinay from the Committee of Citizens have this wonderful correspondence and relationship where they are strategizing the Plessy v. Ferguson case. So Torghay's argument, obviously, is this is a violation of the 14th Amendment, as we've already spoken of, which is equal protection of the law.

He's aware that he's losing the case. and when that happens on the lower level, that's a success. That's what they want so that this can go up and be argued on large things. What kind of time frame were we talking about? The event happened when Plessy is arrested in 1892. I guess it takes a year or so to go through that lower case. Eventually, when do we go to the Supreme Court? It goes to the Supreme Court in 1894 or so, but then there's all kinds of delays.

The court in the 1890s has a huge docket, and it just keeps getting pushed off. So we're not going to get Plessy until, you know, a few years later. You're speaking of people in a different tone. It's what's really interesting to me of a broader awareness of this happening and the impact that it could have. Was it in the papers? Was the public aware of this as much? Yeah, here's the thing. Everyone involved knows the stakes. Mardinet and, and Torre. Torre is like, say, if we lose, is going to be bad. And Martinet says it's worth the risk because living life under the constraints of this unfolding Jim Crow is like being in prison. But by the time we get to

the 1890s, there is a sense amongst many people in the North that they've just kind of had enough, that it's time for reconciliation of the North and South. And they're tired of not people who are reading Torges' columns, but of a lot of other people, this matter's been settled. You know, we're going to let the South do it the way they want to do it. And so the Plessy case is not drawing as much attention as it should have. And as in retrospect, it's just in tactfulness. But the folks who are involved know the stakes. When this gets to the Supreme Court, it's heavy.

majority rule. Seven judges rule against Plessy, one dissent. This will surprise me to my dying day how many Republican judges rule against this law. It's extraordinary, isn't it? It is, in retrospect. If you're on the ground in the 1890s, these views have become the kind of the centrist position, that separate but equal is going to be okay. And that, that, you know, they're, you know, to a certain extent, some of the Republican judges are trusting that the South will be good to their word and that the facilities, if separate, are going to be equal, which we know in retrospect, they never were. But it's, it, there's just this moment of this kind of romance of reunion, as one scholar has put it in the 1890s, where people are willing to kind of take this argument that. that it's good that the North won the Civil War and that slavery was ended, but that reconstruction was a corrupt failure, and it's now time to allow a new South to handle race relations as they wish.

Interesting. So at least some of these men's minds, this is not an abdication of the federal role in this. It's actually shifting the responsibility to the states. As America should be. That's right. So, yeah, majority seven, one dissent, that dissent famously, John Marshall Harlan from Kentucky. His dissent famously has this line. In the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior dominant ruling class of citizens. There's no caste here. Our constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among the citizens. Again, in the eye as a law, he was saying, but in reality, it's something different, wasn't he? Yes. Here, What Louisiana argues in this case, in defense of the law, is that when black people and white people are together in close quarters in public accommodations, there's often friction, sometimes violence.

And it's just a reasonable police measure to separate the races. And it doesn't, as Henry Billings Brown and the majority opinion says, that doesn't say that one race is better than the other. it just says that they're going to be separate in separate but equal positions. But Harlan says, we all know what's going on here. Don't tell me this is simply a police power. The idea here is to create a cast that white people don't want to sit with black people and where Henry Billings Brown and the majority says, the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument consists of the assumption

that the enforced separation stamps the colored race for the badgered. of inferiority, and Harlan says, we know what's happening here. This is cast, and our Constitution is colorblind. And he will go on to say that I think in the future, they will view this decision as pernicious in its effects as the Dred Scott decision. And then he says, the thin disguise of equal accommodations for passengers and railroad coaches will not mislead anyone nor atone for the wrong this day done. It's right to call into this argument the Dred Scott situation. It is a dreadful decision we're talking about.

May 18th, 1896. This is basically what will kick off 60 years of Jim Crow in America to one degree or another. We can track this back. I mean, it's amazing. When you look at the list of things that we all lived with, some of us lived with if you're old enough, everything from the Montgomery bus boycott to the Birmingham bombings. The list is long and ugly. All of that can in one form or another be traced back to the Plessy v. Ferguson?

Is that fair to say or am I being inflammatory? No, that's absolutely fair to say. The policies came from the states, but when the Supreme Court gave its imprimatur to the Jim Crow system in Plessy, the states in the South then go. Hogwild, and they start passing separate laws for separation in restaurants, in water fountains, in blood supplies, and separate Bibles to swear on in court. And they will combine this with another policy that the Supreme Court will also give its approval to in a case called Williams v. Mississippi, which is the idea that you could use literacy tests always.

unfairly applied to disqualify voters. And the combination of the Jim Crow laws and the literacy tests are going, which will disfranchise the vast majority of black voters as they face unfairly applied tests, that combination of disfranchisement and all of these laws that are going to get very particular in the ways people have to separate. And in fact, in some point, are going to try, like in Baltimore, to pass laws saying people have to live on different streets and in different parts of town. All of that takes off thanks to Plessy. So Plessy is going to set off this moment, which will be the nadir of black rights in America. But with the important point that the folks like the Committee of Citizens never give up, even in the darkest moments.

You're going to start to see folks like W.E.B. Du Bois and what will eventually become the N.A.C.P.'s legal campaign under Charles Hamilton, Houston and Thurgood Marshall, that the law could still be used to undo what was done. And eventually they'll win. Well, that's, I often say it on this, this podcast. It's, it's one of the more inspiring moments in that the, not Plessy versus Ferguson, the reaction among black Americans. to say, okay, you know, we're still, you're still treating us this way, but we're still pull out the bootstraps intellectually through scholarship, through law, through whatever, and they start staging a whole new effort in a whole new spirit. It's incredible. I mean, the proudest American moment, it might be in. Yeah, it's, the NAACP legal campaign is mesmerizing. And my, my course on the legal history of the civil rights movement, students are always kind of stunned by it. With the caveat that there is another approach taken by Booker T.

Washington, who is going to take something of publicly a more accommodationist position saying, okay, we can deal with separate but equal, as long as it's really equal, and as long as we're given the tools for black economic empowerment. And the debates between Du Bois and And Booker T. Washington, over the approach to take to the Jim Crow system, become quite famous and bitter. The end of this story is, in some regards, the simple story of Homer Plessy, who now returns to normal life, lives out his days rather unremarkably. The case wasn't even mentioned in his obituary. That's the irony here. In 2022, he gets an official pardon from the Louisiana governor, John Bell Edwards, who signed a full posthum of.

pardon for Homer Plessy, clearing his criminal record 125 years after his conviction. But those in the Committee of the Citizens begin to cede the ground of this entire other legal approach that happens in the early part of the 20th century, which is so incredible. They wrote this line about how they felt during Reconstruction. We gave up our hearts to hope and began to dream beautiful dreams. I just want to end this conversation by underscoring the fact that. that America and black America has been through these cycles before. And it's incredibly clarifying to talk about the engine of it all, which is the Supreme Court decision.

But when you talk to a black American who's aware who talks about, oh, boy, here we go again, that kind of stuff that white Americans often sigh about and say, oh, you know, can't we get past this? Well, no, we can't because we've been through it before. They will say to you. This is the truth of the matter, the reality of the situation. I bling to the hope that the understanding of this case in particular gives clarity and structure to that argument, right? Yes. And I mean, there's no question about it as, you know, has been famously stated by a lot of people that America has a series of ideals announced in the Declaration of Independence and then enshrined with the rule of law in the Constitution, particularly the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution. and it's been an uneven path. We go back, we go forward, but the arc of American history

is generally that over time we live up to our ideals. And the reaction to the decision in Plessy, the legal acumen of the Charles Hamilton-Hustons and the Thurgood Marshals and the folks who took to the streets, reinforces the idea that in a nation with a rule of law, with a nation with a Constitution, we can always use the courts eventually to bring us back to the principles of the declaration and the Constitution. Wise words. Michael Ross is a professor of constitutional history at the University of Maryland. He is the author of the Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case, a true story of race,

law and justice in the Reconstruction era, as well as Justice of Shattered Dreams, Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court during the Civil War era. Get these books. He's also the associate editor of the Journal of Supreme Court history. Michael, it's been a great honor, and I really appreciate your time. The audience doesn't know how much because it was difficult recording this, and I appreciate it. Yes, great to be here. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes. dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements, to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow,

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