Picture of homer plessy by a railroad
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When Homer Plessy boarded the East Louisiana Railway’s No. 8 train in New Orleans on June 7, 1892, he knew his journey to Covington, Louisiana, would be brief.
He also knew it could have historic implications.
Plessy was a racially-mixed shoemaker who had agreed to take part in an act of civil disobedience orchestrated by a New Orleans civil rights organization.
On that hot, sticky afternoon he walked into the Press Street Depot, purchased a first-class ticket and took a seat in the whites-only car.
He was seven-eighths white and could easily pass for a white man, but a conductor, who was also part of the scheme, stopped him and asked if he was “colored.” Plessy responded that he was.
“Then you will have to retire to the colored car,” the conductor ordered.
Plessy refused.
Before he knew it a private detective, with the help of several passengers, had dragged him off the train, put him in handcuffs and charged him with violating the 1890 Louisian
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On June 7, 1892, a 30-year-old African-American man named Homer Plessy attempted to board a segregated East Louisiana Railroad passenger train car at Press and Royal Streets in New Orleans. Louisiana's Separate Car Act, passed in 1890, required the segregation of rail passengers traveling on intrastate railroads.
A group of New Orleanians organized as the Comite' des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) decided to challenge the law. The committee selected Plessy for the legal campaign, in part, because of his light complexion. A darker-complected person would not likely have been able to purchase a ticket and be seated in the rail car reserved for whites. Plessy purchased a ticket to board the train that departed at 4:15 p.m. for Covington, Louisiana. After a planned altercation with the train conductor, Plessy refused to give up his seat and move to the colored only car; the train was stopped and he was arrested immediately by a private detective hired by the Comite&
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Homer Plessy
American activist (1858, 1862 or 1863 – 1925)
Homer Adolph Plessy (born Homère Patris Plessy; 1858, 1862 or March 17, 1863[a] – March 1, 1925) was an American shoemaker and activist who was the plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson. He staged an act of civil disobedience to challenge one of Louisiana's racial segregation laws and bring a test case to force the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of segregation laws. The Court decided against Plessy. The resulting "separate but equal" legal doctrine determined that state-mandated segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution as long as the facilities provided for both black and vit people were putatively "equal". The legal precedent set by Plessy v. Ferguson lasted into the mid-20th century, until a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions concerning segregation, beginning with Brown v. Board of Educatio