Here's a link to Justice Harlan's lone dissent to "Plessy."
Beautifully written, it's also quite stirring, although if you read carefully, you'll notice the shadow of white supremacy hovering over the opinion.
Also notice that the notion of the Constitution as color-blind is central to Harlan's argument.
On a bitterly ironic note, assorted opponents of every civil rights victory from Brown to the Civil Rights Act to the various benchmarks in case law made by Federal Appellate Judges like Frank Johnson of Alabama, which confirmed the most expansive meaning of the 54 decision and the 65 legislation, often use Judge Harlan's dissent, which was clearly the precursor of the Civil Rights revolution that is still going on, (see the U of Michigan decision of last week) to bash those committed to making sure there is no retreat, no turning back from our committment to the completion of that revolution, as being the "new" racists.
For anyone interested, you can find out more info about Judge Johnson here. Amazon has his book here, but it's expensive. Too bad, because the book includes a transcript of a wonderful interview Bill Moyers did with the Judge for PBS in 1980, in which Johnson speaks, in slow, elegant, Southern accented English, of an important moment in his life when he re-read Justice Harlan's dissent and realized its fundamental moral rightness. Read the two customer reviews at Amazon; they're intelligent and knowledgable.
If anyone has a link to an online transcript of the interview, I'd be happy to post it.
