Henry
Billings Brown
was born in South Lee, Massachusetts, on 2nd March, 1836. Brown was
admitted to the bar in Detroit in 1860
and three years later became assistant U.S. attorney for the eastern
district of Michigan (1863-68). He developed his own law practice
as well as acting as a circuit judge.
In 1890 President Benjamin Harrison
appointed him to the Supreme Court. Brown
was a hardworking justice and helped to reduce the court's backlog
of cases. This included a case in 1894 where he controversially argued
that people of annexed territories were not entitled to constitutionally
guaranteed rights and privileges.
In 1896 Brown ruled that Homer Plessey
had been rightly convicted in Louisiana for riding in a white only
railway car. In doing so he established the legality of segregation
as long as facilities were kept "separate but equal" and
helped to sustain Jim Crow laws. Only
one of the Supreme Court justices, John
Harlan, disagreed with this decision.
Henry Billings Brown, who retired from the court when he reached the
age of seventy, died at Bronxville, New York, on 4th September, 1913.
Last
updated: 26th July, 2002
(1) Henry Billings Brown on
the case of Homer
Plessey,
an African-American who in 1896
appealed to the Supreme
Court
after being convicted by a Louisiana court for riding in
a white only railway car.
Laws permitting, and even requiring,
their separation in places where they are liable to be brought into
contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to
the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized
as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise
of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected
with the establishment of separate schools for white and coloured
children, which has been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative
power even by courts of states where the political rights of the coloured
race have been longest and most earnestly enforced.
The case reduces itself to the question whether the statute of Louisiana
is a reasonable regulation, and with respect to this there must necessarily
be a large discretion on the part of the legislature. In determining
the question of reasonableness, it is at liberty to act with reference
to the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people,
and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation
of the public peace and good order. Gauged by this standard, we cannot
say that the law which authorizes or even requires the separation
of the two races in public conveyances is unreasonable or more obnoxious
to the Fourteenth Amendment than the acts of Congress requiring separate
schools for coloured children in the District of Columbia.
We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to
consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two
races stamps the coloured race with a badge of inferiority. If this
be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely
because the coloured race chooses to put that construction upon it.
(2) John
Harlan,
dissenting opinion on the case of Homer
Plessey
(1896)
The white
race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. But in
view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this
country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is
no caste here. Our Constitution is colour-blind and neither knows
nor tolerates classes among citizens.
In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.
The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man
as man and takes no account of his surroundings or of his colour when
his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are
involved. It is therefore to be regretted that this high tribunal,
the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached
the conclusion that it is competent for a state to regulate the enjoyment
by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race.
Sixty millions of whites are in no danger from the presence here of
8 million blacks. The destinies of the two races in this country are
indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that
the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate
to be planted under the sanction of law. What can more certainly arouse
race hate, what will more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling
of distrust between these races than state enactments, which, in fact,
proceed on the ground that coloured citizens are so inferior and degraded
that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white
citizens?
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