Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents

Using the full text of the Courts opinion, along with a selection of responses to the actual ruling, Plessy v. Ferguson, the book, provides context to help you re-create the complicated debates and conditions in which the decision occured.

Brook Thomas is chair of the English and Comparative Literature Department at the University of California, Irvine. After a book on James Joyces Ulysses (1982), he turned his attention to the intersections of law, literature, and cultural history in the United States. He is author of Cross-Examinations of Law and Literature: Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, and Melville (1987): The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics (1991); and American Literary Realism and the Failed Promise of Contract (1997). He has lectured on Plessy v. Ferguson to more than five thousand undergraduates over the course of several years.