Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation

by Steve Luxenberg

Overview

A New York Times Editors' Choice
Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award
Longlisted for the Cundill History Prize

“Absorbing.… Segregation is not one story but many. Luxenberg has written his with energy, elegance and a heart aching for a world without it.” —James Goodman, The New York Times Book Review

Separate is a myth-shattering narrative of one of the most consequential Supreme Court cases of the nineteenth century, Plessy v. Ferguson. The 1896 ruling embraced racial segregation, and its reverberations are still felt today. Drawing on letters, diaries, and archival collections, Steve Luxenberg reveals the origins of racial separation and its pernicious grip on American life. He tells the story through the lives of the people caught up in the case: Louis Martinet, who led the resisters from the mixed-race community of French New Orleans; Albion Tourgée, a best-selling author and the country’s best-known white advocate for civil rights; Justice Henry Billings Brown, from antislavery New England, whose majority ruling sanctioned separation; Justice John Harlan, the Southerner from a slaveholding family whose singular dissent cemented his reputation as a steadfast voice for justice. Sweeping, swiftly paced, and richly detailed, Separate is an urgently needed exploration of our nation’s most devastating divide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357691
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/04/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	624
Sales rank:	390,064
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Steve Luxenberg is the author of Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation and the critically acclaimed Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret. During his thirty years as a Washington Post senior editor, he has overseen reporting that has earned numerous national honors, including two Pulitzer Prizes.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Prologue April 1896 xiii

Cast Of Characters xxi

Part I Ambition

Chapter 1 Taking Their Seats • Massachusetts, 1838-1843 3

Chapter 2 Harlan of Kentucky • 1853-1857 25

Chapter 3 Brown of New England • 2856-1857 47

Chapter 4 Tourgee of Ohio • 1858-1860 69

Chapter 5 The Free People of Color • New Orleans, 1860 91

Part II War

Chapter 6 "The Harlan Name" • Kentucky, 1858-1862 107

Chapter 7 "A War of Which No Man Can See the End" • Brown in Detroit, 1860-1864 131

Chapter 8 "For This I Am Willing to Die" • Tourgee on the March, 1861-1863 153

Chapter 9 "Claim Your Rights" • New Orleans and Washington, 1863-1864 175

Part III Ascent

Chapter 10 Choosing Sides • Harlan in Kentucky, 1865-1871 193

Chapter 11 "A Taste for Judicial Life" • Brown in Detroit, 1866-1872 215

Chapter 12 Tourgee Goes South • North Carolina, 1865-1870 237

Chapter 13 Equal but Separate • New Orleans and the North, 1867-1871 261

Part IV Precipice

Chapter 14 "Is Not Harlan the Man?" • Kentucky and Washington, 1875-1878 281

Chapter 15 "Uncongenial Strifes" • Brown and Tourgee, 1875-1879 305

Chapter 16 Fool's Errand • North and South, 1880-1883 329

Chapter 17 The Color Line Sharpens • 1883-1888 351

Chapter 18 "The Negro Question" • Mayville, Washington, and New Orleans, 1889-1890 373

Part V Resistance

Chapter 19 "In Behalf of 7,999,999 of My Race" • New Orleans, Mayville, Detroit, and Washington, 1890-1891 397

Chapter 20 Arrest • Mayville and New Orleans, 1892-1893 419

Chapter 21 "You Are Fighting a Great Battle" • Washington, Mayville, and New Orleans, 1893-1895 443

Chapter 22 "In the Nature of Things" • March, April, May 1896 465

Epilogue 489

Acknowledgments 507

Notes 513

Sources 571

Index 581

Editorial Reviews

"Informative, engaging, exquisitely written, sensitive to individuals’ frailties, flaws, and inconsistencies, by turns inspiring and dispiriting, Separate is a splendid work of history."

Florida Courier - Glenn C. Altschuler

"Luxenberg gives a three-dimensional and almost novelistic treatment to the players involved, drawing on diaries, letters and archival research."

The New York Times - Joumana Khatib

"Separate vividly tells the story of how far our country had to go to repudiate its commitments to a racial double standard."

The Nation - David Cole

"In Separate, the context and aftermath of the court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson are woven into a nuanced history of America’s struggles in the 19th century as a civil war was fought, slavery ended and a new, complex racial politics haltingly took form."

The Economist

"A striking view of Reconstruction and of the tragic stillbirth of freedom in that era."

Wall Street Journal - Charles S. Dameron

"In documenting this country’s fateful journey from slavery through thwarted Reconstruction to segregation, Luxenberg paints on a broad canvas, elegantly narrating several captivating and scrupulously researched stories that converge in Plessy v. Ferguson.… [F]ascinating."

New York Journal of Books - Steve Nathans-Kelly

"An ambitious and deeply researched nonfiction account.… [Luxenberg] draws on letters, diaries and archival collections to bring the true story to life."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution - Suzanne Van Atten

"Deeply researched, and it wears its learning lightly."

The New Yorker - Louis Menand

"Dazzlingly well-reported.… [A]n eye-opening journey through some of the darkest passages and haunting corridors of American history."

NPR - Terence Samuel

…absorbing…Along with the court cases and the three lovingly researched lives, Luxenberg devotes many lively and illuminating pages to race and politics in New Orleans…Segregation is not one story but many. Luxenberg has written his with energy, elegance and a heart aching for a world without it.

The New York Times Book Review - James Goodman

12/10/2018

The 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld the legality of “separate but equal” facilities for white and black Americans, is widely viewed as the beginning of the jim crow era in the South, but, as journalist Luxenberg convincingly argues, it was the result of decades of debate about race relations. The case of Homer Plessy, a New Orleanian “fair-skinned enough to cause confusion” about which car he should occupy on the state’s segregated trains, was actually a test case engineered by the city’s community of mixed-racial-heritage people, who saw their prestige and power slipping away as the nation moved toward a less nuanced conception of race. In lucid prose, Luxenberg lays out the history of racialized segregation in the North and South of the United States and offers vivid portraits of main actors in this civil rights struggle, from ex-slave abolitionist Frederick Douglass to judge John Marshall Harlan (raised in Kentucky, but a staunch supporter of the Union during the Civil War) and lawyer Albion Tourgee, whose Civil War military service awakened him to the “full awfulness” of slavery. Some readers may find this exhaustively researched account excessively wordy and too detailed, but Luxenberg provides a useful take on one of the Supreme Court’s most influential decisions. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"A magisterial assessment of a U.S. Supreme Court’s grievous moral collapse...a definitive work on the 1896 legal drama that afflicts us to this day."

David Simon

"Forensically researched, deeply moving, devastatingly relevant."

Katherine Boo

"Absorbing....so many surprises, absurdities and ironies....Segregation is not one story but many. Luxenberg has written his with energy, elegance and a heart aching for a world without it."

James Goodman

"A surprising, compelling, and brilliant milestone in understanding the history of race relations in America."

Bob Woodward

"This is a compulsively readable work of serious history, the absorbing and timely story of a disastrous U.S. Supreme Court decision, freshly told through the lives of those directly involved. Steve Luxenberg’s scholarship is deep and impressive; his writing even more so. This is history as it was lived, giving us a sense not only of the deep racism of the period, but the struggle of decent men and women to overcome it, in society and, most importantly, in themselves."

Mark Bowden

"[Luxenberg] is a fine writer who tells this story in an engaging manner....Separate reminds us that our history is not simply a narrative of greater and greater freedom."

Eric Foner

"Riveting and deeply researched, Separate tells the story surrounding one of the nation’s most devastating acts: drawing a sharp color line between black and white after the Civil War. The Plessy case was a knife that cleaved America, and Steve Luxenberg brilliantly reveals that divide with his rich narrative of admirable and flawed characters caught in the battle over racial justice. Every paragraph resonates in today’s headlines."

Walter Isaacson

★ 2018-11-13

A triple biography illuminates the birth of the Jim Crow era.

On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy was arrested for refusing to leave a whites-only railway car in New Orleans. Plessy could and often did pass for white; his arrest had been arranged to create a perfect Supreme Court test case of Louisiana's segregationist Separate Car Act. The result was catastrophe. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) held in sweeping terms that "separate but equal" services were acceptable under the federal Constitution, cementing segregation in public and private facilities across the South for another 60 years. The appeal was directed by Albion Tourgée, a famous New York lawyer and civil rights crusader. The court's opinion was written by Henry Billings Brown of Michigan; the sole dissenter was John Marshall Harlan of Kentucky. Longtime Washington Post senior editor Luxenberg (Annie's Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret, 2009) investigates the multiplicity of American racial attitudes in the latter half of the 19th century through biographies of these three men, and he carries it off in style. Throughout this period, Americans in all regions grappled with questions involving relations between the races, including distinctions between social and political equality and the difficulties of determining a person's race. The author's subjects well encapsulate his theme. Tourgée was a northern firebrand who lived for years in Reconstruction-era North Carolina, facing down the Ku Klux Klan. Harlan's views evolved from his slave-state origins to a vision of limited racial equality. Brown remained subject to the pervasive casual racism that informed the nation's progress from slavery to apartheid in the service of the comfort of the white majority. Luxenberg brilliantly tackles a difficult task, presenting his solidly researched work clearly and with a restrained objectivity. The racial conflicts and conundrums emerge organically from the colorful stories of each of the principals, with the tragic ending always in view.

An engaging and sensitive exploration of America's detour from the promise of equal protection.

Kirkus Reviews