Henry Billings Brown

Henry Billings Brown lived from March 2, 1836 to September 4, 1913 and was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1891 to 1906. Although a respected lawyer and United States district judge before ascending to the high court, Brown is harshly criticized for writing the majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, an opinion 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, erasing legislative achievements won during Reconstruction through its separate but equal doctrine.