Henry Billings Brown
American judge
Died when: 77 years 186 days (930 months)Star Sign: Pisces
Henry Billings Brown (March 2, 1836 – September 4, 1913) was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1891 to 1906.
Although a respected lawyer and U.S.District Judge before ascending to the high court, Brown is harshly criticized for writing the majority opinion in Plessy v.
Ferguson, widely regarded as one of the most ill-considered decisions ever issued by the Court, which upheld the legality of racial segregation in public transportation.
Plessy legitimized existing state laws establishing racial segregation, and provided an impetus for later segregation statutes.Legislative achievements won during the Reconstruction Era were erased through Plessy's "separate but equal" doctrine.
Brown has mostly been forgotten, or remembered only in derision for his obtuse statements in the Plessy opinion, such as his frequently-ridiculed rejection of a claim that the Louisiana segregation statute at issue "stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority.
If this be so [Brown wrote], it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it."
