...good order." If blacks believed segregation was an insult and an attempt to enforce white superiority, "it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the coloured race chooses to put that construction upon it." Elsewhere in its opinion, the majority noted...

...authorizes or even requires the separation of the two races in public conveyances is unreasonable. . . . We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's...be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the fact, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. Although "separate...

...either race to the other." It was a "fallacy," Justice Brown wrote, to assume that enforced segregation "stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority....colored race chooses to put that construction upon it." Plessys arguments also "assume that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation," but that...

...1896, p. 551). If blacks felt that they were the objects of discrimination, opined the Court, it was "not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely...the Colored race chooses to put that construction on it" (p. 551). Only Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented, presciently concluding that the purpose...