Three of these all-Black services were in Washington, D.C., culminating in a huge multifaith gathering at the cavernous Metropolitan A.M.E. When Harlan died in 1911, Black congregations around the country organized spontaneous memorial services without expecting that a single white person would attend. The fact that one person, rather than none, in the white power structure had recognized the injustice visited upon them was a slender thread that nonetheless kept some Black people believing in the American system. While these words were barely noticed in the white community, they were widely discussed among Black leaders. Furthermore, he predicted that the horrific effects of the decision - while visited exclusively on Black people - would do pernicious harm to the country at large: “What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens. His open declaration that a “wrong” had been done to African-Americans not only affirmed their rights but acknowledged their humanity. He also clearly saw the pain of the victims. No one would be so wanting in candor as to assert the contrary.” Harlan saw instantly that holding one race apart from all others didn’t pass the smell test, and he was frank enough to declare that everyone else knew it as well: “The thing to accomplish was, under the guise of giving equal accommodation for whites and blacks, to compel the latter to keep to themselves while traveling in railroad passenger coaches. The subject was Louisiana’s separate-car law, through which the proponents argued that keeping travelers like Homer Plessy in a separate railroad car didn’t violate the Constitution as long as they got substantially equal service. The greatness of Harlan’s opinion was in the way it combined unyielding principles with a common-sense examination of the case. A month later, The Enterprise was able to focus on the future: “We have read nothing so clear, so manly, so straight forward and uncompromising in many a day as Justice Harlan’s dissenting opinion … he uttered words that will ever endear him to the hearts of the colored people.” “Beyond the decision of the Supreme Court, there is no redress,” grieved The Enterprise, a Black paper in Omaha, in the days after the decision. Over the last decade or so, as African-American newspapers have become digitized, the impact of Harlan’s words on the Black community has become clearer, including its role in inspiring the many courageous figures who rose up to challenge the separate-but-equal doctrine approved in Plessy. His status as a legal progenitor extends into the current day, when justices of all political persuasions acknowledge the soundness of his views while admiring his courage in expressing them. Harlan had drawn such guidelines in his dissents before Plessy, and would do so afterward, as well - in cases involving crucial economic and labor protections as well as race. More than just a static marker, it was a road map for those who would labor into the future to undo the great injustice done that day. (This was quite ironic, since he had owned slaves early in his life.) But those attaboys didn’t completely capture the importance of his dissent. Thus, 43 years after his death, Harlan got a posthumous pat on the back, along with the not insignificant acknowledgment that he alone had seen clear of the fog of racism. “This is an instance in which the voice crying in the wilderness finally becomes the expression of a people’s will,” wrote the Times editorial board. “Justice Harlan Concurring,” was the cheeky headline on The New York Times editorial the Sunday after the decision. Board of Education, many people, even in white America, agreed that Harlan had been right all along. Nearly six decades later, when the Supreme Court finally overruled Plessy v. The law regards man as man and takes no account of his surroundings or his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.” The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. “In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. “Our Constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,” he wrote in its most famous passage.
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