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The Legal and Literary Complexities of U.S. Citizenship Around 1900

Abstract One year before he argued Homer Plessy’s case before the Supreme Court, Albion W. Tourgée wrote, “Citizenship in the abstract is the most comprehensive, complex, difficult and important of human relations, and American citizenship is especially complex in its character and relations.” This essay explores those complexities by cross-examining three Supreme Court cases decided within five years of one another—Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), and Downes v. Bidwell (1901)—with works of literature by Tourgée, Charles W. Chesnutt, and Thomas Dixon. The essay makes no claim to resolve the complexities it describes. But it does point to how those complexities, arising during this era of segregation, imperial expansion, and Chinese exclusion, remain with us today.