John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911) was born in Boyle County, Kentucky on June 1, 1833. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1853. He served as colonel of a Kentucky regiment in the Union army until 1863 when he became Attorney General of his state. Harlan was appointed to the United States Supreme Court in 1877 by President Rutherford. On the Court, Harlan became known as "the great dissenter," and his most important dissension came with the Plessy v. Ferguson case (1896). The court agreed on “separate but equal” which legitimized South segregation practices, but Harlan wrote that he saw no distinction for race in the Constitution; in fact, Harlan wrote that the Constitution is colorblind. Harlan died on October 14, 1911, after 33 years with the Supreme Court, one of the longest tenures in history.