Plessy v. Ferguson A Brief History with Documents

This text offers a concise analysis of the Plessy case, allowing readers to understand the Court's reasoning, the social and political realities that made such a decision possible, and the immediate effects on public life. Thomas's comprehensive introduction explains the complicated legal issues involved in both the majority decision and the lone dissent by Justice John Marshall Harlan. a rich collection of primary documents-including court decisions, Booker T. Washington's 1895 'Atlanta Exposition Address, ' an essay by W.E.B. Du Bois, and a previously unpublished speech by Charles W. Chesnutt-enables readers to recreate for themselves the context of the debates and to conditions in which the decision was made.

Brook Thomas is chair of the English and Comparative Literature Department at the University of California, Irvine. After a book on James Joyce's Ulysses (1982), he turned his attention to the intersections of law, literature, and cultural history in the United States. He is author of Cross-Examinations of Law and Literature: Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, and Melville (1987): The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics (1991); and American Literary Realism and the Failed Promise of Contract (1997). He has lectured on Plessy v. Ferguson to more than five thousand undergraduates over the course of several years.