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Homer A. Plessy’s interrupted train ride became the basis of Plessy v. Ferguson,
S
S
Since 1837
1880
?
1837
the court case that gave legal cover to seventy years of Jim Crow laws. The mixedrace Plessy tried to sit in a whites-only railcar en route to Covington to test a new
state law requiring separate cars on trains. His arrest and conviction was appealed
to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1896 the court ruled that “separate but equal” facilities were legal, which gave the green light for the states to segregate all areas of life.
NO ACCIDENT: Plessy, a shoemaker, was
recruited by the Comité des Citoyens,
prominent mixed-race men who were
considered free people of color before the
Civil War. They wanted to challenge the
1890 state Separate Car Law in order to
halt the growth of Jim Crow, which was
undoing the gains they made during
Reconstruction.
RESTING PLACE: Plessy returned
CRIME SCENE: Plessy was an “octoroon,” one-eighth black. The committee thought his light complexion would
show the arbitrariness of the law and that Plessy would make a more sympathetic figure to white people. He
boarded the East Louisiana Railroad Co. train at Press and Royal streets. The picture above is of the West
End station of a different line. To ensure the test case would work, the committee hired a private detective to
detain Plessy for the police and had the cooperation of the conductor for the East Louisiana Railroad to ensure Plessy was challenged. The railroad opposed the law because of the cost of maintaining separate cars.
His grand-nephew, Keith Plessy, stands at at Press and Royal today..
to anonymity after the case.
He died in 1925 and is buried
in St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery.
A plaque commemorating
his role in history is on his
tombstone.
LAW OF THE LAND: On a 7-1 vote, the court said the 13th and 14th amendments guaranteed political,
but not social equality, so “separate but equal” facilities were lawful. The lone dissenter, Justice
John Harlan, correctly predicted that the ruling would provide the legal underpinning for the
rollback of the gains black people made in the Civil War. “The thin disguise of ‘equal’ accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this
day done,” he wrote. The precedent was finally overturned in the 1954 Brown v. Topeka school
segregation case when the Supreme Court unanimously declared that “separate but equal is
inherently unequal.” In that and following rulings, Jim Crow was destroyed.
COMING TOMORROW
The first electric
streetcars take to
the rails.
MORE PHOTOS, STORIES
Justice
Harlan
Expanded photo
galleries on
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175years