The test case originated in New Orleans when Homer Plessy, an octoroon (a person having one-eighth African ancestry), refused to leave a whites-only railroad car when told to do so and was later convicted of violating the law. The shameful ruling in the Plessy case legitimized the practice of racially “separate but equal” facilities in virtually every area of southern life, including streetcars, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, parks, sports stadiums, and places of employment.
The opposite happened in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Warren wrote the opinion, handed down on May 17, 1954, in which a unanimous Court declared that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” In support of its opinion, the Court cited sociological and psychological findings demonstrating that even if racially separate facilities were equal in quality, the mere fact of separating students by race engendered feelings of inferiority. A year later, after further argument, the Court directed that the process of racial integration should move “with all deliberate speed.”
