{"id":63521,"date":"2022-03-22T19:31:04","date_gmt":"2022-03-22T19:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=63521"},"modified":"2022-03-22T20:14:30","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T20:14:30","slug":"the-journey-to-separate-but-equal-madame-decuirs-quest-for-racial-justice-in-the-reconstruction-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=63521","title":{"rendered":"The Journey to Separate but Equal: Madame Decuir’s Quest for Racial Justice in the Reconstruction Era"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Journey to Separate but Equal: Madame Decuir’s Quest for Racial Justice in the Reconstruction Era<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

University Press of Kansas<\/a>
\nApril 2021
\n256 pages
\nHardback ISBN: ISBN 978-0-7006-3183-4<\/p>\n

Jack M. Beermann<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of Law and Harry Elwood Warren Scholar
\nBoston University School of Law<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In The Journey to Separate but Equal: Madame Decuir\u2019s Quest for Racial Justice in the Reconstruction Era<\/em>, Jack Beermann tells the story of how, in Hall v. Decuir<\/em><\/a>, the post\u2013Civil War<\/a> US Supreme Court took its first step toward perpetuating the subjugation of the non-White population of the United States<\/a> by actively preventing a Southern state<\/a> from prohibiting segregation on a riverboat<\/a> in the coasting trade on the Mississippi River<\/a>. The Journey to Separate but Equal<\/em> offers the first complete exploration of Hall v. Decuir<\/em>, with an in-depth look at the case\u2019s record; the lives of the parties, lawyers, and judges; and the case\u2019s social context in 1870s Louisiana<\/a>. The book centers around the remarkable story of Madame Josephine Decuir and the lawsuit she pursued because she had been illegally barred from the cabin reserved for White women on the Governor Allen riverboat.<\/p>\n

The drama of Madame Decuir\u2019s fight against segregation\u2019s denial of her dignity as a human and particularly as a woman enriches our understanding of the Reconstruction era<\/a>, especially in Louisiana, including political and legal changes that occurred during that time and the plight of people of color who were freed from slavery but denied their dignity and rights as American citizens. Hall v. Decuir<\/em> spanned the pivotal period of 1872\u20131878, during which White segregationist Democrats \u201credeemed\u201d the South from Republican control. The Supreme Court\u2019s ruling in Hall<\/em> overturned the application of an 1869 Louisiana statute prohibiting racial segregation in Madame Decuirs case because of the status of the Mississippi River as a mode of interstate commerce. The decision represents a crucial precedent that established the legal groundwork for the entrenchment of Jim Crow<\/a> in the law of the United States, leading directly to the Courts adoption of separate but equal<\/a> in Plessy v. Ferguson<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In “The Journey to Separate but Equal: Madame Decuir\u2019s Quest for Racial Justice in the Reconstruction Era,” Jack Beermann tells the story of how, in Hall v. Decuir, the post\u2013Civil War US Supreme Court took its first step toward perpetuating the subjugation of the non-White population of the United States by actively preventing a Southern state from prohibiting segregation on a riverboat in the coasting trade on the Mississippi River.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,459,1467,369,8,17,20,25],"tags":[33322,33325,33321,33324,33323,15511],"class_list":["post-63521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-law","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-usa","category-women","tag-hall-v-decuir","tag-jack-beermann","tag-jack-m-beermann","tag-josephine-decuir","tag-madame-josephine-decuir","tag-university-press-of-kansas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63521"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63528,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63521\/revisions\/63528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}