We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson

This book was the perfect read on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.


A dramatic story rescued from what historians forgot   September 22, 2003
Bonnie Britt (USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Long before Rosa Parks refused the disrespectful order
to go to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama,
came Homer Plessy, the young shoemaker who knew he'd be
arrested for refusing to leave the "whites only" car on
the New Orleans railroad. He refused to go to the
segregated car in order to make the point that the law
was cruel and unjust. A federal case was made of it,
and in the end, the US Supreme Court made segregation
the law of the land for the next 53 years. The high
court ruled that "separate but equal" was fair and
equitable but history has proven there was nothing fair
nor equal about that decision. History also proves
there was no justice in that high court opinion and no
wisdom or sense of human rights residing with the
Justices who issued it.

In "We as Freemen," Keith Medley uncovers the rich and
intriguing history of the personalities who fought for
equality 30 years after the Civil war ended, but
generations before U.S. rulers ended legal
discrimination based on skin color. In carefully
crafted prose, the author is apparently the first
researcher to explore the character, mores and lives of
the long forgotten men of the Comite des Citoyen
(Committee of Citizens) who planned and carried out the
peaceful challenge to Louisiana's Separate Car Act of
1890. Homer Plessy did not suddenly challenge
segregation. In a story well-told, Medley turned up
primary research found in dusty nooks and crannies, and
church, library and cemetery logs around New Orleans,
which is his hometown. He describes the efforts of
businessmen, lawyers, educators, and artisans to stop
segregation from taking hold in the South. They
conducted their campaign while the forces of reaction
were regaining political control after the Civil War.
The Comite aimed "to obtain a United States Supreme
Court ruling preventing states from abolishing the
suffrage and equal access gains of the Reconstruction
period that followed the Civil War."

Medley manages to summon Homer Plessy from the
obscurity Jeremy Irons identifies in his "A People's
History of the Supreme Court" (Penguin: 1999) with new
research that portrays Plessy as a quiet, hardworking
man anxious not to be treated disrespectfully because
of his heritage and skin color.

Like the U.S. Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision,
which barred slaves and their descendants from
citizenship, the high court's decision in Plessy vs.
Ferguson was demeaning and hurtful to millions of
people. The high court decision in Plessy divided the
population, causing widespread suffering. For this
reason, it is useful to recall the dark side of Supreme
Court history and to appreciate that the Justices are,
for better or worse, political appointees who often
press their own viewpoints, which tend also to
represent the narrow views of the class of politicians
who appoint them. Or as Irons put the Plessy decision
in context, amid growing strife "the Court remained a
bastion of conservatism, earning this banquet toast
from a New York banker in 1895: 'I give you, gentlemen,
the Supreme Court of the United States- -guardian of
the dollar, defender of private property, enemy of
spoliation, sheet anchor of the Republic.' "

In 1857 and again in 1896, the Supreme Court inflicted
upon the public the views of Southern plantation owners
and thuggish ideologues, a tiny but disproportionately
powerful part of the population.

In short order, the Comite "formulated legal strategy
while raising money from the neighborhoods of New
Orleans, small towns throughout the South, and in
cities as far away as Washington D.C. and San
Francisco" and published their views in the African-
American daily, The Crusader. Medley documents the
heroic role of The Crusader in the battle for human
rights in the humid South. The Comite held popular

rallies, and did all anyone can do within democratic
structures to organize resistance to the dark era of
ignorance spreading through the legislatures, town
halls and courtrooms controlled by rich white American
men across the South. (Women would wait another
generation to win the right to vote.) And, it would be
more than five long decades before the wrongs of the
high court's Plessy decision would be reversed, in part
due to arguments put forward by then lawyer Thurgood

Marshall to the high court sitting in 1954. Marshall
argued the case in conjunction with the re-awakening
across the land of the persistent struggle for Civil
Rights.

I highly recommend Keith Medley's "We as Freemen" and I
particularly like that he was able to locate
photographs portraying those who fought bravely but
lost a key round in the struggle for human rights.


A Roadmap for change   August 2, 2003
M. D. Moore (Harvey, La USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

"We As Freemen" is a book that reminds us that the names impressed on our court cases were people with professions, families and all of the messy problems of ordinary life. The author draws on original documentation to illustrate the pains of the free and newly free Black populace as they watched their liberties curtailed or removed entirely. It was interesting to read the precise legal choices of the Comite des Citoyens as they moved to ensure that the charges against Plessy be properly drawn (This was reminiscent of Taylor Branch's "Parting the Waters"). The text is clear and dramatic. It could easily serve both as a warning of how freedom is lost and as encouragement for anyone seeking a roadmap for change.