Plessy v. Ferguson (The Civil Rights Movement), by Amos Esty

This particular book is a short one at just over 100 pages and it seeks to explain the Plessy v. Ferguson case that established separate but unequal, which meant at the time and increasingly more so as decades went on separate and unequal in its historical and cultural context.  The author writes from the point of view of oppressed blacks, which is natural I suppose since the case and its repercussions are of far more interest to contemporary blacks then they are to contemporary whites.  In reading this book alongside a couple of others in an exercise in syntopical reading, I was struck by just how many of the same images are used by multiple books, demonstrating either the convenience or the poverty of documentary material that is used by historians in covering such matters as this.  I also found it quite intriguing about just how little there is to write about a court case like this, because it was a setup from the beginning, albeit one that went drastically wrong when the composition of the court changed and became vastly less friendly to the interests of blacks.

In just over 100 pages this book contains 9 chapters that discuss Plessy v. Ferguson and the state of America’s views on race that relate to the case and its impact.  The author begins with the short train ride where the setup occurred by which Plessy admitted to being black (or not white) on a train ride and was escorted off by a friendly policeman who was in on the setup (1).  After that the author goes back to look at the shadow of slavery that influenced the lives of postwar blacks like Plessy (2), and looked at life in the New Orleans of the late 1800’s and its complex social structure (3).  The author discusses the struggle between integration and segregation (4), especially as it related to the question of education, which everyone understood to be a necessary aspect of the rise of blacks from ignorance.  The author looks at the law that mandated segregated train cars (5) and the various efforts that were made to challenge the law in something that could be voted on by the Supreme Court (6).  Finally, the author looks at how the case was made by Tourgee and others (7), the decision of the court, which was 7-1 against Plessy and integration (8), and the resulting separate and unequal society that followed the case (9), finished by a timeline, sources, bibliography, websites, and an index.

In reading this book I was struck by just how sympathetic I was to the views of Booker T. Washington, who sought economic equality and a gradual and peaceful rise in the position of blacks in American society.  The author clearly views Washington’s support in a negative light–and would likely see continued differences in education and social standing between blacks and whites in a very harsh light–but it is hard to see how a practical person at the time could have seen things any differently.  The equality that blacks wanted with whites was something that depended, and still depends, on the consent of whites.  That consent was lacking–whites did not want to view blacks as equals and did not want to engage in social intercourse with them on the basis of equality–and they made that clear through violence, rhetoric, and the coercion of law and its application.  While I can certainly empathize with the desire to be accepted as an equal, I wonder about the worth of rehashing such matters as this case and its result over and over again if one is genuinely trying to be accepted by those who might view one’s behavior and rhetoric as more than a bit strident and uncomfortable.