Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

This month marks the 130th anniversary of one of the most infamous cases in the history of the United States Supreme Court.

Plessy v. Ferguson challenged a notorious Jim Crow law, one of many that at the time had replaced slavery

with segregation in the South. This now nearly universally discredited decision from the Supreme

Court is worthy of our reflection, especially in light of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration

of Independence. Homer Plessy was a black man arrested for buying a ticket

for a so-called white train car. He was arraigned before Judge John Ferguson for defying a Louisiana law

that required railroads to provide what were called equal but separate cars for people of different

races. Plusy argued that the Louisiana law imposed a

badge of servitude on him and denied him equal protection under the laws and the exercise of his

privileges and immunities as a U.S. citizen. The state of Louisiana argued that it was

reasonable exercise of the state's police powers. The case worked its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where, in a 7-1 decision, the court upheld Louisiana's law as constitutional.

The court allowed the state to rely on, and I quote, the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people. The decision dealt a crucial

blow to efforts for racial equality, validating the separate but equal doctrine as constitutional

for several more decades. The lone dissent in the decision came from Justice John Marshall

Harlan, an elder who taught in a Presbyterian church until his death, including

during his years while on the Supreme Court.

He was sincere in his Christian faith, even earning a chapter in Cambridge University

presses volume, Great Christian Jurist in American History.

Though he was an early supporter of slavery and an opponent of Abraham Lincoln, Harling came to see the

end of the Civil War and the subsequent amendments to the Constitution as part of God's

...