Public rights, social equality, and the conceptual roots of the Plessy challenge

Michigan Law Review

Volumn 106, Issue 5, 2008, Pages 777-804

  Scott, Rebecca J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

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EID: 42349110240     PISSN: 00262234     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (181)

1. LA. CONST, tit. I, art. II (1868).
2. 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
3. Ex parte Plessy, 11 So. 948, 951 (La. 1892).
4. The decision is also excerpted in THE THIN DISGUISE: TURNING POINT IN NEGRO HISTORY 71-74 (Otto H. Olsen ed., 1967).
5. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 544 (1896) ("[I]n the nature of things [the Fourteenth Amendment] could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.").
6. Id. at 552.
7. "Equal but separate" rather than "separate but equal" is the precise wording of the statute. Act of May 12, 1890, No. Ill, 1890 La. Acts 152.
8. Ex parte Plessy, 11 So. at 949.
9. WILLIAM E. NELSON, THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT: FROM POLITICAL PRINCIPLE TO JUDICIAL DOCTRINE 186-87 (1988).
10. Id.
11. MICHAEL J. KLARMAN, FROM JIM CROW TO CIVIL RIGHTS: THE SUPREME COURT AND THE STRUGGLE FOR RACIAL EQUALITY 22 (2004)
12. [hereinafter KLARMAN, FROM JIM CROW TO CIVIL RIGHTS];
13. see also Michael Klarman, The Plessy Era, 1998 SUP. CT. REV. 303.
14. OWEN M. FISS, TROUBLED BEGINNINGS OF THE MODERN STATE, 1888-1910, at 354, 357, 362 (1993);
15. CHARLES A. LOFGREN, THE Plessy CASE: A LEGAL-HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION 197 (1987).
16. KLARMAN, FROM JIM CROW TO CIVIL RIGHTS, supra note 9, at 58.
17. For alternate perspectives, see Matthew D. Lassiter, Does the Supreme Court Matter?-CM Rights and the Inherent Politiciwtion of Constitutional Law, 103 MICH. L. REV. 1401 (2005),
18. and Kenneth W. Mack, Rethinking Civil Rights Lawyering and Politics in the Era Before Brown, 115 YALE L.J. 256 (2005).
19. On the metaphor of the "Serbonian bog," see JOHN MILTON, PARADISE LOST 46 (Merritt Y. Hughes ed., Bobbs-Merrill Educ. Publ'g. 1983) (1667).
20. For law-related use of the metaphor, see Landress v. Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Co., 291 U.S. 491, 499 (1934) (Cardozo, J., dissenting),
21. and JOHN FABIAN WITT, THE ACCIDENTAL REPUBLIC: CRIPPLED WORKWOMEN, DESTITUTE WIDOWS, AND THE REMAKING OF AMERICAN LAW 20-21 (2004).
22. For the contrary view, see KLARMAN, FROM JIM CROW TO CIVIL RIGHTS, supra note 9, at 59, who argues that "[m]ost Jim. Crow laws merely described white supremacy; they did not produce it."
23. The term "mutually constitutive" is often invoked to denote this back-and-forth between law and other forms of action, in which the distinction between "law" and "society" is intentionally blurred. The elegant and now classic manifesto for one variant of this approach is Robert W. Gordon, Critical Legal Histories, 36 STAN. L. REV. 57 (1984).
24. See also the discussion in the dossier on history and law in Numéro Spécial, Histoire et Droit, 57 ANNALES: HISTOIRE, SCIENCES SOCIALES 1425 (2002),
25. especially Alain Boureau, Droit naturel et abstraction judiciaire: Hypothèses sur la nature du droit médiéval, 57 ANNALES: HISTOIRE, SCIENCES SOCIALES 1463 (2002).
26. I thank Roger Chartier for pointing out this alternate reading of the Quixote metaphor.
27. LA. CONST, tit. I, art. II (1868).
28. For an intriguing discussion of the interplay of public standing and social status in conservative thought in Britain after the French Revolution, see DON HERZOG, POISONING THE MINDS OF THE LOWER ORDERS 414-546 (1998).
29. For an explication of the dignitary content of the Plessy case from the point of view of normative political philosophy, see Gerald J. Postema, Introduction: The Sins of Segregation, 16 L. & PHIL. 221 (1997). Postema argues that segregation's core evil is the public denial of the fundamental good of "status or standing as a full and equal member of one's society."
30. Id. at 241.
31. The language used in the Reconstruction-era struggle can be followed in the pages of the New Orleans Tribune and the New Orleans Daily Crescent during late 1867 and early 1868.
32. These events were discussed in the New Orleans Tribune in the months surrounding July of 1867, the first anniversary of the massacre at Mechanics' Hall.
33. ERIC FONER, RECONSTRUCTION: AMERICA'S UNFINISHED REVOLUTION, 1863-1877, at 62-67, 262-63 (1988).
34. A close analysis of the composition of the delegates is presented in chapter six of TED TUNNELL, CRUCIBLE OF RECONSTRUCTION: WAR, RADICALISM AND RACE IN LOUISIANA, 1862-1877, at 111-35 (1984).
35. Portions of the debate appear in OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONVENTION, FOR FRAMING A CONSTITUTION FOR THE STATE OF LOUISIANA (1867-68)
36. [hereinafter OFFICIAL JOURNAL].
37. An overview of the legislature is provided in ROGER A. FISCHER, THE SEGREGATION STRUGGLE IN LOUISIANA, 1862-77, at 48-56 (1974).
38. This concept of the Declaration was vividly expressed by both Charles Sumner and Frederick Douglass. See JOHN STAUFFER, THE BLACK HEARTS OF MEN: RADICAL ABOLITIONISTS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF RACE 22-26 (2001).
39. Some prewar state constitutions had done the same, though the import of the phrase "free and equal" had been diminished by the decision in State v. Post, 20 N.J.L. 368, 373-76, 378-86 (1845).
40. For the successive draft wordings of the bill of rights, see OFFICIAL JOURNAL, supra note 21, at 84-109, 116-117.
41. OFFICIAL JOURNAL, supra note 21, at 96.
42. A case of this kind from colonial Peru is carefully analyzed in Tamara J. Walker, Ladies and Gentlemen, Slaves, and Citizens: Dressing the Part in Lima, 1723-1854, at 142-43 (2007) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan) (on file with author).
43. For a discussion of honor, illegitimacy, and constructs of "the public," see ANN TWINAM, PUBLIC LIVES, PRIVATE SECRETS: GENDER, HONOR, SEXUALITY, AND ILLEGITIMACY IN COLONIAL SPANISH AMERICA 25-37 (1999).
44. On the transformations of these concepts in the nineteenth century, see HONOR, STATUS, AND LAW IN MODERN LATIN AMERICA (Sueann Caulfield et al. eds., 2005).
45. See CARYN COSSÉ BELL, REVOLUTION, ROMANTICISM AND THE AFRO-CREOLE PROTEST TRADITION IN LOUISIANA, 1718-1868, at 222-75 (1997).
46. For the text of the Déclaration, see Louis TRIPIER, LES CONSTITUTIONS FRANÇAISES 10 (1848).
47. The term dignité evoked both merit and respect as well as honorableness. 1 DICTIONNAIRE HISTORIQUE DE LA LANGUE FRANÇAISE 1085 (Alain Rey et al. eds., 1998).
48. Within the droits de l'homme (rights of man) one finds the complementary concept of libertés publiques (public liberties).
49. For a mid-nineteenth-century discussion, see 1 DENIS SERRIGNY, TRAITÉ DU DROIT PUBLIC DES FRANÇAIS, PRÉCÉDÉ D'UNE INTRODUCTION SUR LES FONDEMENTS DES SOCIÉTÉS POLITIQUES 287-88 (1846).
50. See also JEAN-LUC AUBERT, INTRODUCTION AU DROIT ET THÈMES FONDAMENTAUX DU DROIT CIVIL § 56, at 47-48 (9th ed. 2002). The "rights of man" can be seen to include the right to "public liberties." These do not translate directly as "public rights," but could be so named in English.
51. See LAURENT DUBOIS, AVENGERS OF THE NEW WORLD: THE STORY OF THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION (2004);
52. JOHN D. GARRIGUS, BEFORE HAITI: RACE AND CITIZENSHIP IN FRENCH SAINT- DOMINGUE (2006).
53. See DUBOIS, supra note 29, at 80-88, 119-20;
54. LAURENT DUBOIS, A COLONY OF CITIZENS: REVOLUTION AND SLAVE EMANCIPATION IN THE FRENCH CARIBBEAN, 1787-1804 (2004);
55. GARRIGUS, supra note 29.
56. For a synthesis, see Laurent Dubois, An Enslaved Enlightenment: Rethinking the Intellectual History of the French Atlantic, 31 SOC. HIST. 1 (2006).
57. 1 P. ROSSI, COURS DE DROIT CONSTITUTIONNEL PROFESSÉ ÀLA FACULTÉ DE DROIT DE PARIS 9 (1866).
58. Id. at 11-12.
59. Id. This is one of many re-editions of a set of lectures dating originally to 1836.
60. See PHILIPPE BRAUD, LA NOTION DE LIBERTÉ PUBLIQUE EN DROIT FRANÇAIS ii, 9-10, 45 (1968). I thank Pasquale Pasquino for discussions of Rossi's history.
61. 1 SERRIGNY, supra note 28, at 287-88.
62. See MAURICE AGULHON, 1848 OU L'APPRENTISSAGE DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE, 1848-1852 ch. 1 (1973).
63. The 1848 abolition decree spoke of dignité. See D'UNE ABOLITION, L'AUTRE: ANTHOLOGIE RAISONNER DE TEXTES CONSACRÉS X LA SECONDE ABOLITION DE L'ESCLAVAGE DANS LES COLONIES FRANÇAISES 17-19 (Myriam Cottias ed., 1998).
64. Arago's instructions were Portant instructions pour l'exécution du décret du 27 avril 1848, Circulaire Ministérielle No. 358 of May 7, 1848, Bulletin Officiel de la Martinique [Official Bulletin of Martinique], May 7, 1848, p. 594.
65. See BELL, supra note 26, at 29-34;
66. IRA BERLIN, GENERATIONS OF CAPTIVITY: A HISTORY OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVES 51-96 (2003);
67. KIMBERLY S. HANGER, BOUNDED LIVES, BOUNDED PLACES: FREE BLACK SOCIETY IN COLONIAL NEW ORLEANS, 1769-1803 (1997).
68. Rebecca J. Scott, Public Rights and Private Commerce: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Creole Itinerary, 48 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 237-49 (2007).
69. JEAN-CHARLES HOUZEAU, MY PASSAGE AT THE NEW ORLEANS TRIBUNE: A MEMOIR OF THE CIVIL WAR ERA (David C. Rankin, ed., Gerard F. Denault trans., 1984).
70. Scott, supra note 37, at 241 (quoting a letter from Tinchant to General Máximo Gómez).
71. For more on Tinchant, see Rebecca J. Scott & Jean M. Hébrard, Les papiers de la liberté: Une mère africaine et ses enfants àl'époque de la révolution haïtienne, GENÈSES, March 2007, at 18-25.
72. On the charge of "social equality" as a label to disqualify proposals to the Louisiana constitutional convention of 1867-68, see OFFICIAL JOURNAL, supra note 21, at 277. A small number of radical antislavery activists in the North did embrace the concept of social equality, along with an aspiration to friendship across the color line.
73. See STAUFFER, supra note 22, at 8-44.
74. On the variability of schemes of rights, see RICHARD A. PRIMUS, THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE OF RIGHTS 124-26, 127-76 (1999).
75. The battle over the phrase "social equality" emerged in many Reconstruction contexts, and was closely associated with thinking about gender and sexuality. See HANNAH ROSEN, TERROR IN THE HEART OF FREEDOM: CITIZENSHIP, SEXUAL VIOLENCE, AND THE MEANING OF RACE IN THE POSTEMANCIPATION SOUTH (forthcoming 2008);
76. Barbara Y. Welke, When All the Women Were White, and All the Blacks were Men: Gender, Class, Race, and the Road to Plessy, 1855-1914, 13 L. & HIST. REV. 261, 261-316.
77. A full analysis of the concept and label "social equality" is beyond the scope of this Article. As specialists in African American history have demonstrated, however, the negative connotations of "social equality" as a framing device led even quite radical thinkers to eschew the term. W.E.B. Du Bois makes this point most vividly in W.E.B. Du Bois, On Being Crazy, 26 CRISIS 55, 55 (1923).
78. Tinchant's letter appeared in the French-language pages of the New Orleans Tribune, July 21, 1864. On the "protectable legal interest" in defense of one's honor under French law, see James Q. Whitman, Enforcing Civility and Respect: Three Societies, 109 YALE L.J. 1279, 1279-1398 (2000).
79. OFFICIAL JOURNAL, supra note 21, at 290.
80. Id. at 117 (emphasis omitted);
81. see also id. at 275-277.
82. On various complexities of this mixture, see VERNON VALENTINE PALMER, THE LOUISIANA CIVILIAN EXPERIENCE: CRITIQUES OF CODIFICATION IN A MIXED JURISDICTION (2005).
83. See 4 WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND ch. 1 (Univ. of Chicago Press 1979) (1769);
84. William J. Novak, The Legal Transformation of Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century America, in THE DEMOCRATIC EXPERIMENT 85, 95 (Meg Jacobs et al. eds., 2003).
85. The classic formulation can be found in 3 BLACKSTONE, supra note 47, at 348: "if an inn-keeper, or other victualler, hangs out a sign and opens his house for travellers, it is an implied engagement to entertain all persons who travel that way . . . ."
86. See also BARBARA YOUNG WELKE, RECASTING AMERICAN LIBERTY: GENDER, RACE, LAW, AND THE RAILROAD REVOLUTION, 1865-1920, at 323-75 (2001).
87. For an erudite examination of this question, see Joseph William Singer, No Right to Exclude: Public Accommodations and Private Property, 90 NW. U. L. REV. 1283 (1996).
88. For a sociolegal interpretation of the rise of racial segregation in rail travel, with attention to the construct of "social equality," see Kenneth W. Mack, Law, Society, Identity, and the Making of the Jim Crow South: Travel and Segregation on Tennessee Railroads, 1875-1905, 24 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 377 (1999).
89. OFFICIAL JOURNAL, supra note 21, at 114-18;
90. see also TUNNELL, supra note 21, at 117-19 (analyzing roll call votes on these questions).
91. On Thomas Isabelle, see ERIC FONER, FREEDOM'S LAWMAKERS: A DIRECTORY OF BLACK O FFICEHOLDERS DURING RECONSTRUCTION 115 (2d ed. 1996).
92. On the early Code Noir and the later Civil Code, see PALMER, supra note 46, at 23. 62-65, 71, 101-34.
93. For a careful tracing of the "emancipationist" thread in post-Civil War thought, see DAVID BLIGHT, RACE AND REUNION: THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICAN MEMORY (2001).
94. OFFICIAL JOURNAL, supra note 21, at 294.
95. Id.
96. In 1872, for example, state delegates to the Republican convention struggled over the nomination of Aristide Mary, a man of color, for the office of governor. As Rodolphe Desdunes later emphasized, at stake here was not the politics of the particular nomination, but the right of such a man to be a candidate for public office. RODOLPHE L. DESDUNES, NOS HOMMES ET NOTRE HISTOIRE: NOTICES BIOGRAPHIQUES ACCOMPAGNÉES DE REFLEXIONS ET DE SOUVENIRS PERSONNELS 183-84 (1911) ("[J]e dirai que les partisans d'Aristide Mary ont revendiqué le droit d'aspirer au poste de gouverneur, mais qu'ils n'ont pas convoité le poste mĉme." ["I would say that the supporters of Aristide Mary were claiming the right to aspire to the post of governor, but that they did not seek the post itself."]).
97. VA. CONST, art. I, § 20.
98. See KIRK H. PORTER & DONALD BRUCE JOHNSON, NATIONAL PARTY PLATFORMS, 1840-1956, at 47 (1956) (describing the 1872 platform);
99. id. at 54 (describing the 1876 platform, which called on Congress and the executive branch to secure "to every American citizen complete liberty and exact equality in the exercise of all civil, political, and public rights").
100. For a careful exploration of the competing interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment as either a new citizenship, or the recognition of an unjustly denied prior citizenship, see Richard A. Primus, The Riddle of Hiram Revels, 119 HARV. L. REV. 1681 (2006).
101. Article III of the Treaty of Cession reads: The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States and admitted as soon as possible according to the principles of the federal Constitution to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States, and, in the mean time they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property and the Religion which they profess. Cession of Louisiana, U.S.-Fr., Apr. 30, 1803, 1803 U.S.T. 10, reprinted in REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE TO HIS EXCELLENCY W. W. HEARD, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF LOUISIANA 45-48 (1902).
102. Its importance to subsequent generations of activists is discussed in BELL, supra note 26, at 29-40.
103. The decision by Bates arose from a dispute over the citizenship claims of ship captains who were men of color. To the Secretary of the Treasury, 10 Op. Att'y Gen. 382, 382-83 (1862).
104. See Importante Décision, L'UNION, Dec. 25, 1862, at Al;
105. Edouard Tinchant, Letter to the Editor, LA TRIB., July 21, 1864, at 2 ("[N]é Français, nous avons gagné [le]s lettres de naturalisation américaine sur les [remjparts de la Nouvelle Orléans, debout, l'arme [au] bras, au pied du drapeau des Etats-Unis pour [le]quel nous étions prĉts a verser la dernière goutte de notre sang; quelle est donc la puissance [h]umaine qui peut nous nier notre titre de citoyen américain." [[B]orn French, I earned my naturalization papers on the ramparts of New Orleans, upright, with my weapon in my hand, at the foot of the flag of the United States, prepared to spill the last drop of my blood; what then is the human power that could deny my title to American citizenship?]). The available microfilm edition is made from a torn copy; material in square brackets is inferred. I thank Diana Williams for alerting me to the existence of this letter.
106. Walsh v. Lallande, 25 La. Ann. 188, 189 (1873).
107. The Louisiana Supreme Court was ruling on the retrospective citizenship claim of Charles Lallande, who had lost claim to a piece of property in 1860 when a land office commissioner judged that as a "free negro" he had no right to hold property under the pre-emption laws of 1841. See id. at 188-89. The language of the case is, among other things, a nice technical rebuttal of Chief Justice Taney's argument in the Dred Scott decision that people of color had never held national citizenship in the era of the founders.
108. Id. at 189-90.
109. See BELL, supra note 26, at 41-64.
110. On the educational institutions that helped to nurture these claims of right, see Mary Niall Mitchell, "A Good and Delicious Country": Free Children of Color and How They Learned to Imagine the Atlantic World in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana, HIST. EDUC. Q., Summer 2000, at 123.
111. LA. CONST, tit. I, arts. II, XIII (1868).
112. The testimony from this case at the state level is transcribed in Transcript of Record, Hall v. Decuir, 95 U.S. 485 (1877) (No. 294). The manuscript originals of the state case are in the Supreme Court of Louisiana Collection, Department of Archives and Manuscripts, Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans.
113. Id. at 51.
114. On the question of women's particular claims to respect and respectability, see Welke, supra note 42.
115. Mrs. Decuir, who had lived twelve years in France, was a strong-minded woman. On an earlier journey, she had planted herself firmly in a rocking chair in the ladies' cabin. The distressed captain, had a "note" conveyed to her telling her to leave. She responded by "summoning" the captain and trying to shame him into letting her remain. Transcript of Record, Decuir, 95 U.S. 485 (No. 294).
116. Decuir, 95 U.S. at 488-91, rev'g, Decuir v. Benson, 27 La. Ann. 1 (1875).
117. For other challenges brought under the 1868 Constitution and the subsequent Civil Rights Act of 1869, see Sauvinet v. Walker, 27 La. Ann. 14 (1875) (upholding a district court grant of damages to the civil sheriff of the parish of Orleans, who had been refused service at a coffeehouse),
118. and Joseph v. Bidwell, 28 La. Ann. 382 (1876) (upholding ruling granting damages to a man refused entrance to a theater).
119. See also ROGER A. FISCHER, THE SEGREGATION STRUGGLE IN LOUISIANA, 1862-77, at 80-87 (1974).
120. FRANCIS H. SMITH, PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL UNION REPUBLICAN CONVENTION HELD AT PHILADELPHIA, JUNE 5 AND 6, 1872, at 51 (1872).
121. Patrick O. Gudridge, Privileges and Permissions: The Civil Rights Act of 1875, 8 LAW & PHIL. 83, 125 (1989).
122. On Maryland test cases under the federal Act, see Libby Benton, Claims to Rights Under the Civil Rights Act of 1875 (Apr. 24, 2006) (unpublished manuscript, on file with author). On Tennessee, where common law claims were the preferred strategy, see Mack, supra note 49.
123. M.A. CLANCY, PROCEEDINGS OF THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION HELD AT CINCINNATI, OHIO JUNE 14, 15, AND 16, 1876, at 56 (1876).
124. See LA. CONST, art. CCXXXT (1879). Rodolphe Desdunes was furious that the few remaining black legislators had accepted the offer of a separate university: "C'était la fin. L'homme de couleur avait accepté la subordination légale, c'est-à-dire l'idée d'ĉtre traité conventionellement et non constitutionellement." ["It was the end. Men of color had accepted legal subordination, that is, the idea of being treated according to custom rather than according to the constitution."]
125. DESDUNES, supra note 55, at 181.
126. See REBECCA J. SCOTT, DEGREES OF FREEDOM: LOUISIANA AND CUBA AFTER SLAVERY 61-94 (2005);
127. Rebecca J. Scott, "Stubborn and Disposed to Stand their Ground": Black Militia, Sugar Workers, and the Dynamics of Collective Action in the Louisiana Sugar Bowl, 1863-1887, SLAVERY & ABOLITION, April 1999, at 103, 104.
128. On the political context in which the legislation was passed, see KEITH WELDON MEDLEY, WE AS FREEMEN: Plessy v. Ferguson (2003).
129. See Armando Petrucci, Escribir para otros, in PETRUCCI, ALFABETISMO, ESCRITURA, SOCIEDAD 105-16 (1999).
130. See AUBERT, supra note 28, § 179, at 180-81 (discussing the notary as a public officer).
131. For the general regulations governing notaries and their records, see CIVIL CODE OF LOUISIANA: REVISION OF 1870 WITH AMENDMENTS TO 1947, arts. 2234, 2251-66 (Joseph Dainow ed., 1947).
132. For biographical information on Martinet, see MEDLEY, supra note 76, at 150-58.
133. See id. at 33-34, 159 (discussing the residences of Plessy and Desdun.es).
134. See Kathryn Burns, Notaries, Truth, and Consequences, AM. HIST. REV., Apr. 2005, at 110.
135. These characterizations are based on a review of the indices and many of the acts recorded in Martinet's notarial records, which are in the New Orleans Notarial Archives Research Center ("NONARC"). For a detailed analysis, see Rebecca J. Scott, Se Battre Pour Ses Droits: Écritures, Litiges et Discrimination Raciale en Louisiane (1888-1899), 53/54 CAHIERS DU BRÉSIL CONTEMPORAIN 182-209 (2003),
136. and SCOTT, supra note 75, at 75, 88, 161, 172, 200.
137. Under Louisiana law, a notary recorded the formation of societies and transcribed their bylaws. Formal recognition came by depositing these texts with state officials. For examples, see the notations to 1 NOTARIAL ACTS OF LOUIS MARTINET (1890) in NONARC.
138. Act No. 6, Chartre "La Dignité" Société d'Assistance Mutuelle (Oct. 3, 1890), in 1 NOTARIAL ACTS OF LOUIS MARTINET (1890) in NONARC.
139. Each of the women signed in her own hand. "Dignité" had been a key term, in the lexicon of France's 1848 republican revolution. One didactic text emphasized that "une République est l'état qui concilie le mieux les intérĉts et la dignité de chacun avec les intérĉts et la dignité de tout le monde." ["A Republic is the state that best reconciles the interests and the dignity of each with the interests and dignity of all."] CHARLES RENOUVIER, MANUEL RÉPUBLICAIN DE L'HOMME ET DU CITOYEN 93 (Gamier Frères ed., 1981) (1848).
140. Act of July 10, 1980, No. 1.1.1, 1890 La. Acts 152, 152-53,
141. reprinted in Record of Case at 6-7, Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) (No. 15, 248).
142. See DESDUNES, supra note 55, at 165-67, on the "generation of 1860."
143. On support in the countryside, see SCOTT, supra note 75, at 90-91.
144. See also Joseph Logsdon & Lawrence Powell, Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes: Forgotten Organizer of the Plessy Protest, in SUNBELT REVOLUTION: THE HISTORICAL PROGRESSION OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE IN THE GULF SOUTH, 1866-2000, at 42, 56 (Samuel C. Hyde, Jr. ed., 2003);
145. and the CRUSADER, June 1895 (on file with Archives, Xavier University of Louisiana Library, New Orleans, La., available in the Crusader clippings file in Special Collections).
146. On these fundraising efforts, see the clippings from the CRUSADER, supra note 87, especially June 22, 1895, and July 12-20, 1895.
147. See also MEDLEY, supra note 76, at 130-31.
148. CRUSADER, supra note 87,
149. reprinted in MEDLEY, supra note 76, at 165;
150. see also LOFGREN, supra note 10.
151. Excerpts from newspaper reports are in THE THIN DISGUISE, supra note 3,
152. and in the CRUSADER, supra note 87.
153. The initial report of the detective who arrested Plessy, described him as "being a passenger of the colored race on a train of the East Louisiana Railroad Co." Record of Case at 4, Plessy, 163 U.S. 537 (No. 15,248).
154. MARK ELLIOTT, COLOR-BLIND JUSTICE: ALBION TOURGÉE AND THE QUEST FOR RACIAL EQUALITY FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO Plessy v. Ferguson (2006).
155. The argument that the actions of conductors under the law could imperil the property interest that a man or woman might have in the reputation of whiteness is analyzed in Cheryl I. Harris, Whiteness as Property, 106 HARV. L. REV. 1707, 1746-50 (1993).
156. Brief for Plaintiff in Error, Plessy, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) (No. 210), 1869 WL 13992, at 11.
157. Id. at *14.
158. See 1 DICTIONNAIRE HISTORIQUE DE LA LANGUE FRANÇAISE, supra note 27, at 646. By a somewhat puzzling linguistic turn, the word also came to be applied in Spanish in the plural to castas, those who by virtue of mixed ancestry occupied specified roles in a hierarchy of human types in colonial society. I thank, the Portuguese linguist Rita Marquilhas, of the University of Lisbon, for her assistance in tracking the term through various Spanish and Portuguese dictionaries from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
159. One of the few white southern observers who denounced this sleight of hand was New Orleans resident George W. Cable, The Silent South, 30 CENTURY MAG. 647 (1885),
160. reprinted in GEORGE W. CABLE, THE NEGRO QUESTION: A SELECTION OF WRITINGS ON CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SOUTH 83, 92-96 (Arlin Turner ed., 1958).
161. Among works that follow the Court in treating Plessy as involving "social rights" are Klarman, supra note 9, at 325, which distinguishes civil rights from, social rights in the case of school integration,
162. and PLESSY V. FERGUSON: A BRIEF HISTORY WITH DOCUMENTS 13 (Brook. Thomas ed., 1997).
163. For convincing demonstrations that the triumvirate of civil, political, and social rights involves a continual shifting of boundaries, see PRIMUS, supra note 41,
164. and Mark Tushnet, The Politics of Equality in Constitutional Law: The Equal Protection Clause, Dr. Du Bois, and Charles Hamilton Houston, 74 J. AM. HIST. 884 (1987).
165. Klarman treats most critiques of the Plessy decision as falling into anachronism, because, he argues, "it may be fanciful to expect the Justices to have defended black civil rights when racial attitudes and practices were as abysmal as they were at the turn of the century." Klarman, supra note 9, at 305.
166. In Michael J. Klarman, Rethinking the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Revolutions, 82 VA. L. REV. 1, 27-28 (1996), Klarman uses the idea of "dominant racial norms" to similar effect: "The Plessy decision was, indeed, so fully congruent with the dominant racial norms of the period that it elicited little more than a collective yawn of indifference from a nation that would have expected precisely that result from, its Supreme Court."
167. See LA. CONST. tit. I, art. II (1868).
168. MEDLEY, supra note 76, at 167 (quoting Rodolphe Desdunes in the Crusader).
169. For a discussion of the participation of Ramón Victor Pages, a Cuban émigré, see LOUIS A. MARTINET, THE VIOLATION OF A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT 16 (1893),
170. and SCOTT, supra note 75, at 76-77.
171. See J. MORGAN KOUSSER, THE SHAPING OF SOUTHERN POLITICS: SUFFRAGE RESTRICTION AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ONE-PARTY SOUTH, 1880-1910 (1974);
172. MICHAEL PERMAN, STRUGGLE FOR MASTERY: DISFRANCHISEMENT IN THE SOUTH, 1888-1908 (2001).
173. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 544 (1896). Justice Brown's phrasing ("[The Fourteenth Amendment] could not have been intended ... to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality ....") implied a constitutional guarantee of political equality, a guarantee the Court would walk away from within the next few years, particularly in Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 (1902).
174. See Richard H. Pildes, Democracy, Anti-Democracy and the Canon, 17 CONST. COMMENT. 295 (2000).
175. DESDUNES, supra note 55, at 192 ("Nous croyons qu'il est plus noble et plus digne de lutter quand mĉme, que de se montrer passif et résigné. La soumission absolue augmente la puissance de l'oppresseur et fait douter du sentiment de l'opprimé.").
176. Indeed, private matters could be seen as public to the extent that they conferred civil effects. On the floor of the convention, Edouard Tinchant proposed that all women, regardless of color, have the same right to sue for breach of promise (of marriage), and that all women be able to compel to marriage any man with whom they had lived for a year. Louisiana's Creole activists did not shy away from the controversial question of interracial marriage, for in a setting in which women of color had often entered into long-term intimate relationships with men - relationships that had little or no civic protection:-the right to marriage had a strong dignitary component. See OFFICIAL JOURNAL, supra note 21, at 192.
177. CABLE, supra note 95, at 9-10.
178. For a discussion regarding Pagés, see MARTINET, supra note 100, at 16.
179. Plessy, 163 U.S. at 559.
180. SIDNEY J. ROMERO, MY FELLOW CITIZENS: THE INAUGURAL ADDRESSES OF LOUISIANA'S GOVERNORS 245-46 (1980).
181. DESDUNES, in CRUSADER, June 1895, supra note 87.