After a night in jail, Plessy appeared in criminal court before Judge The Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Act, of which Plessy was a member, posted a $500 bond for his release. When the time came for Plessy to make a sacrifice to fight injustice, he did not back away. The racially mixed organization advocated for civil rights, a topic that had interested Plessy since childhood, when his stepfather had been an activist involved in the 1873 Unification Movement to foster racial equality in Louisiana. He was also influenced by his stepfather’s participation in the Unification Movement, a Plessy’s first venture into social activism came in 1887, when he became involved in education reform as vice president of the On June 7, 1892, Plessy walked into the Press Street Depot in New Orleans, bought a first-class ticket to Covington, and boarded the East Louisiana Railroad’s Number 8 train, fully expecting to be forced off the train or arrested—or both.
Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Martinet, of course, knew that the Abbott case did not apply to intrastate commerce—that is, travel entirely within the borders... Homer Plessy is one of many American heroes with ties to New Orleans.
But Plessy (and the committee) had an ingenious second argument that could be raised only by a white-looking Black man like himself. Another Black activist using the strategy was Ida Wells in Memphis, Tenn. in 1884. The group wanted him to make the move to challenge the Separate Car Act, a law passed in 1890 by the Louisiana State Legislature which required Black and White people to board “equal but separate” train cars. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica.Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. He was arrested and jailed in 1892 for sitting in a Louisiana railroad car designated for white people only. For their test case, the committee chose Homer Plessy, who was 7/8ths white and 1/8th Black, a Black man under Louisiana law but able to pass … Virtually any topic for the virtual learner. Get 30% your subscription today.
Homer Plessy, American shoemaker who was best known as the plaintiff in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which sanctioned the controversial “separate but equal” doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws. Germain Plessy, his paternal grandfather, was a White man born in Bordeaux, France, who moved to New Orleans after the Haitian Revolution in the 1790s. The Committee had hired a private detective with arrest powers to take Plessy off the train at Press and Royal streets, to ensure that he was charged with violating the state’s separate-car law and not some other misdemeanor.Everything that the committee had organized occurred as planned, except for the decision of the Supreme Court in 1896. But it chose to press the cause anyway, [author Keith] Medley said. Homer Plessey was a light-skinned Creole of European and African descent. He was 25 and his bride was 19. As the train pulled away from the station, the conductor asked Plessy if he was a “colored” man; Plessy said he was, and the conductor told him to move to the appropriate car, which Plessy refused to do. He changed his plea to guilty and paid the $25 fine.
The following year, he married Louise Bordenave at St. Augustine Church.
History at your fingertips Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality – a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". The leadership of Comité des Citoyens asked Plessy if he would be willing to challenge one of Louisiana's Jim Crow laws by boarding the white section of a train car.
The choice seems unusual. While he lost his case, the decision was reversed by the 1954 Supreme Court decision This petition was accepted by the United States Supreme Court and four years later, in April 1896, arguments for After the Supreme Court ruling, Plessy went back into relative anonymity. Homer Adolph Plessy was born on March 17, 1862, in the French-speaking Creole community in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States to carpenter Joseph Adolphe Plessy and seamstress Rosa Debergue. LONDONDERRY — Fresh off accepting the Republican Party’s nomination, President Donald Trump sowed fear about the implications of a Joe Biden... Homer Adolph Plessy; Born March 17, 1862 New Orleans Orleans Parish, Louisiana, USA: Died: March 1, 1925 (aged 62) New Orleans, Louisiana: Resting place: Saint Louis Cemetery No.
On February 4, 1892, on a first attempt to challenge the law, civil rights activist Daniel Desdunes, son of Rodolphe Desdunes, one of Comité des Citoyens’ founders, bought a ticket for a White passenger car on a train headed out of Louisiana. It was used, for example, by Elizabeth Jennings in 1854 to change segregated transit laws in New York City.