Have you ever gone against your college’s opinion and opposed the majority? Maybe you refused to accept a joint of marijuana or decided to wait for marriage before sex. That person is referred to as a dissenter when it has a political connotation.
Last December, one of my Christmas gifts was a book, “The Great Dissenter,” by Peter S. Canellos. This is the wonderful story of John Marshall Harlan, an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1877 until he died in 1911.
Harlan was born in 1833 in Danville, Kentucky, into the distinguished slave-holding family of James and Elizabeth Harlan. He was named after the Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall.
Harlan grew up with several older brothers, including a mixed-race half-brother, Robert James Harlan. Born into slavery, according to Canellos, Robert was never enslaved.
Robert’s life story is intermingled throughout the book with his younger brother John. Robert’s story could stand on his own and is just as impressive.
Their father, James, raised Robert in his household and ensured that he received an education. Robert earned money as a barber and in horse racing. He eventually purchased his freedom. Robert traveled to California and made a fortune in the Gold Rush before settling in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Robert became a successful businessman. He did this all before the Civil War.
In 1859, Robert moved his family to England to race horses to escape discrimination.
After returning to America, Robert joined the Republican Party and formed a friendship with President Ulysses S. Grant and Frederick Douglass.
Robert believed that education was the key to escaping poverty for blacks. His son, Robert Jr., made friends with another prominent Republican from our history while in college — William Howard Taft.
Putting a stop to Robert’s dreams of success for his family was segregation, which was reinforced when Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913.
One of Robert’s accomplishments was helping his younger brother become a Supreme Court Justice.
Before becoming involved in politics, John fought for the Union during the Civil War as a colonel in the 10th Kentucky Infantry.
John held a reverence for the Constitution and the Founding Fathers, according to Canellos, along with being a devout Protestant that helped him realize that “racism was a poison that destroyed American ideals.”
He was the sole dissenter in the Civil Rights Cases (1883) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which permitted state and private actors to engage in segregation.
Even though Harlan was in the minority, his dissents gave hope to black leaders, such as his brother, Robert, and Douglass.
Canellos wrote of John that he “risked his reputation to affirm the Civil Right Act of 1875, which mandated social equality in public accommodations; unflinchingly defended his own socializing with Fredrick Douglass; was one of only two white public official to attend Douglass’s funeral; and regularly visited and spoke at Black churches.”
When John died, he never saw the fruits of his dissents. It was not until 1954 when Thurgood Marshall, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, used Harlan’s words from his dissenting opinion of Plessy v. Ferguson — “Our Constitution is color blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.” -— to overturn decades of wrong with the case of Brown v. Board of Education.
Current conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Antonin Scalia, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, hold Harlan as a role model, applauding “his faithfulnesses to the original intent of the Constitution.”
John also wrote dissents in other significant cases, many of which were corrected during the Warren Court. His grandson, John Marshal Harlan II, served on the Supreme Court from 1955 to 1971, making them the only two relatives to ever sit on the highest court in America.
This book covered a dark segment of American history when Democrats segregated Blacks; the Ku Klux Klan murdered Blacks, and Republicans did little to stop it. One person who stood out was the great dissenter John Marshall Harlan. He is now considered one of America’s greatest justices to serve on the Supreme Court.
