Plessy AND Ferguson—Activism and the Fight for Justice and Equal Rights
In 1896 the Supreme Court ruled against Homer Plessy, a Black man who boarded a whites-only train car in New Orleans. The ruling legalized "separate but equal" segregation in the US until 1954. Why did Plessy board that train? What were those 1890s Black activists trying to do? Why did it backfire? And what are the descendants of Homer Plessy and the convicting judge, Henry Ferguson, doing today to fight for justice and to set the historical record straight?
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Show Notes
In 1892, Homer Plessy, a mixed race shoemaker in New Orleans, was arrested, convicted and fined $25 for taking a seat in a whites-only train car. This was not a random act. It was a carefully planned move by the Citizen’s Committee, an activist group of Free People of Color, to fight a new law being enacted in Louisiana which threatened to re-impose segregation as the reforms made after the Civil War began to dissolve.
The Citizen’s Committee recruited Homer Plessy, a light skinned black man, to board a train and get arrested in order to push the case to the Supreme Court in hopes of a decision that would uphold equal rights. On May 18, 1896 the Supreme Court ruled on the Plessy v. Ferguson case establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine, upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation.
The case sharply divided the nation racially and its defeat “gave teeth” to Jim Crow. The “separate but equal” decision not only applied to public transportation it spread into every aspect of life — schools, public toilets, public eating places. For some 58 years it was not recognized as unconstitutional until the Brown v. Public Education case was decided in 1954.
Homer Plessy died in 1925 and his conviction for breaking the law remained on his record. In 2022, 125 years after his arrest, the Louisiana Board of Pardons voted unanimously to recommend that Homer Plessy be pardoned for his crime. The pardon was spearheaded by Keith Plessy, a descendent of Homer Plessy, and Phoebe Ferguson, the great-great granddaughter of John Howard Ferguson, the convicting judge in the case. The two have joined forces digging deep into this complex, little known story – setting the record straight, and working towards truth and reconciliation in the courtrooms, on the streets and in the schools of New Orleans and across the nation.
The Plessy and Ferguson Foundation is responsible for erecting plaques throughout New Orleans commemorating African American historic sites and civil rights leaders.