Law Commons^™

Controlling Identity: Plessy, Privacy, And Racial Defamation, Jonathan Kahn

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the origins of privacy law in early twentieth century America in relation to the legal solidification of Jim Crow in the aftermath of Plessy v. Ferguson. It considers some distinctively southern aspects of the origins of the right to privacy and argues that by viewing privacy, racial defamation, and Jim Crow in relation to each other, we can gain new insights into each-coming to understand that Plessy was not just about controlling space, or property, or even equality but also about controlling identity itself, and coming to see that in its origins, the right to privacy had …