Justice Harlan's Dissent 

In Plessy v. Ferguson, Homer Plessy boarded an all-white train car and was removed by the conductor because he was part black, even though he appeared to be white. Plessy was charged and put to trial under the "Separate Car Act". The trial ended with a 7 to 1 vote on still having separate cars for different races, but they have to be equal in quality, they called this the "Separate but equal Act".  The one Supreme Court Justice that did not agree with this decision was Justice John Marshall Harlan. 

John Harlan wrote a famous dissent of this case called "Harlan's Dissent". There are many things I agree with in this dissent, but here are a few main points I got from it. The first one I noticed was when he said the phrase, "our Constitution is colorblind." This quote really got me thinking. Our founding fathers of America wrote the Constitution in a time of slavery, yet the laws and phrases apply to everyone. Any race has to apply by the same laws that white people do. 

Another thing he said that was too long to quote, can be paraphrase into saying that these actions concluded by the court will cause hatred between the blacks and the whites and will do nothing but cause a divide in our country. This would cause more white individuals to become racist and even act out and harass against African Americans. It also has a big impact on everyone because it came from Supreme Court Justices who have a big reputation in American society. I believe this dissent from Justice Harlan still has an affect on people today. Everything he said is still true to this day, except our country is not as racist as it used to be. We can still look back at John Harlan's dissent and learn from it.