Separate

"So many surprises, absurdities and ironies. . . . Segregation is not one story but many. Luxenberg has written his with energy, elegance and a heart aching for a world without it." --New York Times Book Review

A New York Times Notable Book for 2019. An Amazon Best Book of 2019 (History). Longlisted, 2019 Cundill History Prize**

Plessy v. Ferguson , the Supreme Court case synonymous with “separate but equal,” created remarkably little stir when the justices announced their near-unanimous decision on May 18, 1896. Yet it is one of the most compelling and dramatic stories of the nineteenth century, whose outcome embraced and protected segregation, and whose reverberations are still felt into the twenty-first.

Separate spans a striking range of characters and landscapes, bound together by the defining issue of their time and ours—race and equality. Wending its way through a half-century of American history, the narrative begins at the dawn of the railroad age, in the North, home to the nation’s first separate railroad car, then moves briskly through slavery and the Civil War to Reconstruction and its aftermath, as separation took root in nearly every aspect of American life.

Award-winning author Steve Luxenberg draws from letters, diaries, and archival collections to tell the story of Plessy v. Ferguson through the eyes of the people caught up in the case. Separate depicts indelible figures such as the resisters from the mixed-race community of French New Orleans, led by Louis Martinet, a lawyer and crusading newspaper editor; Homer Plessy’s lawyer, Albion Tourgée, a best-selling author and the country’s best-known white advocate for civil rights; Justice Henry Billings Brown, from antislavery New England, whose majority ruling endorsed separation; and Justice John Harlan, the Southerner from a slaveholding family whose singular dissent cemented his reputation as a steadfast voice for justice.

Sweeping, swiftly paced, and richly detailed, Separate provides a fresh and urgently-needed exploration of our nation’s most devastating divide.

“Luxenberg has chosen a fresh way to tell the story of Plessy. . . . Separate is deeply researched, and it wears its learning lightly. It's a storytelling kind of book. . . . ” —Louis Menand, The New Yorker

“A dazzlingly well-reported chronicle of an important period. . . . Luxenberg repeatedly manages to tell us stories that capture both the hope and hopelessness that has been central to America’s long argument about race. . . . An eye-opening journey through some of the darkest passages and haunting corridors of American history.” —Terence Samuel, NPR

"The Plessy case was a knife that cleaved America, and Steve Luxenberg brilliantly reveals that divide with his rich narrative of admirable and flawed characters caught in the battle over racial justice. Every paragraph resonates in today’s headlines.” —Walter Isaacson, bestselling biographer of Einstein, da Vinci and Steve Jobs, and professor of history, Tulane University

“Forensically researched, deeply moving, devastatingly relevant.” —Katherine Boo, author of Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity**

As a work in progress, Separate won the J. Anthony Lukas Award for excellence in nonfiction.