Chapter 20
p. 419-431 -What are the facts, the issues, and the law in State v. Desdunes (1892)?
In State v. Desdunes, the Citizens’ Committee had tested the constitutional validity of the Separate Car Law.
Daniel Desdunes, a young Creole man whose ancestry was one-eighth African and seven-eighths European, was the voluntary protagonist in the first case contrived by the committee. On February 24, 1892, Desdunes boarded a train in New Orleans bound for Mobile, Alabama. He took a seat in the white coach, announced his identity as a colored man, and was arrested for violating the state law. His case was dismissed when the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the Separate Car Law could not constitutionally be enforced against passengers traveling across state boundaries, because only the Congress had power under the Constitution’s commerce power (Article 1, Section 8) to regulate interstate transportation.
p. 431 -441 The issue in Plessy’s case was straightforward, 163 U.S. 537 (1896); Vote: 7–1; Decided: May 18, 1896
Issue: Did the Louisiana Separate Car Law violate the rights guaranteed to Plessy by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments?
Judge John Howard Ferguson presided at the state district court that originally heard Plessy’s case and ruled against him. Plessy appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which ruled that the state government had the power to regulate transportation strictly within the state’s borders and that “separate but equal” accommodations for persons of different races did not violate the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court accepted Plessy’s appeal of the state’s decision, and the federal case of Plessy v. Ferguson was decided nearly four years later, because Plessy’s lawyer, Albion Tourgée, acted very slowly to move the case forward.