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The Fuller Court (1888–1910)

Racial Discrimination

Who was the Court’s lone dissenter in Plessy v. Ferguson?

John Marshall Harlan was the only justice to dissent and it is largely this dissent that earned him the name “the Great Dissenter.” Harlan wrote that “our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” He warned his colleagues that their decision would be “as pernicious as the decision” in Dred Scott.



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