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    Separate: The Story of Plessy V. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation
    Separate: The Story of Plessy V. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation
    Separate: The Story of Plessy V. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation
    Audiobook19 hours

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

    Written by Steve Luxenberg

    Narrated by Donald Corren

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A myth-shattering narrative of how a nation embraced "separation" and its pernicious consequences. Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court case synonymous with "separate but equal," created remarkably little stir when the justices announced their near-unanimous decision on May 18, 1896. Yet it is one of the most compelling and dramatic stories of the nineteenth century, whose outcome embraced and protected segregation, and whose reverberations are still felt into the twenty-first. Separate spans a striking range of characters and landscapes, bound together by the defining issue of their time and ours?race and equality. Wending its way through a half-century of American history, the narrative begins at the dawn of the railroad age, in the North, home to the nation's first separate railroad car, then moves briskly through slavery and the Civil War to Reconstruction and its aftermath, as separation took root in nearly every aspect of American life. Award-winning author Steve Luxenberg draws from letters, diaries, and archival collections to tell the story of Plessy v. Ferguson through the eyes of the people caught up in the case. Separate depicts indelible figures such as the resisters from the mixed-race community of French New Orleans, led by Louis Martinet, a lawyer and crusading newspaper editor; Homer Plessy's lawyer, Albion Tourgee, 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 endorsed separation; and Justice John Harlan, the Southerner from a slaveholding family whose singular dissent cemented his reputation as a steadfast voice for justice.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 12, 2019
    ISBN9781980030225
    Separate: The Story of Plessy V. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation

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    Reviews for Separate

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      As the subtitle of the book says, this is the story of the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision, the Supreme Court ruling in the 1890s that legalized the odious "separate but equal" doctrine which stood for the next half century. The first two-thirds or more of the book is a round-robin biography of some of the leading players in the case, including the writer of the Plessy opinion, the writer of the dissent in Plessy, and one of the key members of the team that brought the case. The actual case itself appears in the last quarter of the book, and there's some interesting discussion of the tactics used to provoke the test case. The disappointment really comes from the discussion of the ruling itself, which comes as something of an anti-climax, and there's not really a great deal of discussion about it. Some of this may be because Justice Brown, the author of the decision, never really commented on it, but the one disappointment I have is that the author really doesn't sink his teeth into the guts of the analysis the majority used. After the huge build-up, it comes as, as I say, an anti-climax. An interesting read, though.
    • 3/5
      Interesting story but very long and boring at times. I couldn't finish it...kept putting me to sleep while driving.