Texas Senator John Cornyn says "Now do Plessy vs Ferguson/Brown vs Board of Education"

Cornyn made the remark via Twitter in a share of former President Barack Obama's statement on the Roe reversal

By Kelly McClure

Nights & Weekends Editor

Published June 25, 2022 5:26PM (EDT)

Sen. John Cornyn (Susan Walsh - Pool/Getty Images)
Sen. John Cornyn (Susan Walsh - Pool/Getty Images)

On Saturday morning, Texas Senator John Cornyn tweeted a racist comment along with a share of former President Barack Obama's statement regarding Friday's Supreme Court ruling to reverse Roe v. Wade.

Obama, making his statement on Twitter on Friday morning shortly after the ruling was handed down, said "Today, the Supreme Court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent, it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues—attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans." 

The following morning, Cornyn shared that statement from Obama to his own Twitter account adding "Now do Plessy vs Ferguson/Brown vs Board of Education."

RELATED: Texas GOP senator didn't "graduate" from Oxford University law program, as claimed in prior campaign

Brown v. Board of Education, ruled on by the Supreme Court in 1954, did historical justice in wiping away the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, making "separate but equal" rightfully unconstitutional.

Following Cornyn's initial tweet, which received tremendous heated backlash, he fired off another one saying "Thank goodness some SCOTUS precedents are overruled."


Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.


"Let's help out less intelligent fellow Americans out," one commenter said in response to Cornyn's initial tweet. "Plessy stood as law of the land longer than Roe. That was [John Cornyn's] point. Now if liberals are arguing Brown v. Board of Ed was wrongly ruled because of long standing precedent, then they should openly say so." 

That comment was retweeted by Cornyn. The following replies were not.

One commenter tweeted a photo of Cornyn with the word "racist" in red over his chest.

Another commenter shared an archival photo of a Black man drinking from a water fountain labeled "colored" and asked "You miss this sort of thing?"

And yet another out of the thousands of similar commenters shared an illustration of a Klan hood next to a MAGA hat featuring the text "Evil doesn't die, it reinvents itself."

Read more:


By Kelly McClure

Kelly McClure is Salon's Nights and Weekends Editor covering daily news, politics and culture. Her work has been featured in Vulture, The A.V. Club, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, Nylon, Vice, and elsewhere.

MORE FROM Kelly McClure