ABSTRACT
There have been three momentous Supreme Court decisions in the history of Afro-Americans: Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Brown v. The Board of Education. Significant related essays on Plessy may be found in Otto H. Olsen's documentary compilation The Thin Disguise, and a similar documentary edition by Albert P. Blaustein and Clarence Clyde Ferguson, Jr. entitled Desegregation and the Law. Bernstein analyzed several cases cited in Plessy in search for legal precedents supporting the "separate but equal" principle. The Plessy case had an aura of mysticism because Homer Adolph Plessy never admitted to any court that he had any colored, Negroid, or African blood. Attorney Albion Tourgee, who represented the plaintiff and had previously suggested a near-white to be used in the test case, filed a brief stating that Plessy had seven-eights Caucasian and one-eighth African blood with no discernible Afro-American features.
