Dissenting......................

John Marshall Harlan
Associate Justice United States Supreme Court   1887-1911

The year is 1896.  In Plessy v Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court votes 7-1 to uphold a Louisiana law allowing for "separate but equal" railroad passenger cars.  This decision allows forced segregation to be legal under the law until it is overturned in Brown v Board of Education in 1954.

John Marshall Harlan, the one vote against the decision in Plessy, tendered a strong dissent to that ruling.  Full dissent is here.  Excerpt here:

 "But in the view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens.  There is no caste here.  Our Constitution in color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.  In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.   The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.  The law regards man as man and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved....

"The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution.  It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds."