The Supeme Court — Plessy vs. Ferguson Gets a Makeover
How segregation was an evil that caused much harm and death.
Words cannot express an injustice that has lasted for 130 years after one man refused to leave a train car, Homer Plessy, a Black man. He finally gets his day in the sunshine from the pitch dark of night being pardoned for his effort to desegregate the trains.
New Orleans, Louisiana’s governor posthumously pardon Homer Plessy for being arrested while refusing to leave a white-only railroad car in 1892 protesting racial segregation. He was a member of a small civil rights group aiming to overturn a stae law segregating trains.
In resistance to Plessy and the civil rights’ group action, the state in 1896 passed a law, the 1896 ruling aka Plessy vs. Ferguson, segregating all public accommodations, i.e. transportation, hotels, and schools for decades.
Plessy stance against racism sparked the United States Supreme Court ruling that cemented “separate but equal” into law for half a century. This law blocked children of color from attending educational instituion thereby many recieived an inferior education due to the efforts of the powers that were.
2021, a pardon for Homer Plessy was reccommended by the state Board of Pardons. Governor Edwards held the pardon ceremony near the spot where Plessy was arrested.
Better late than never, the pardon came about to erase an attrocity that happend 125 years ago and to ackwowldege society’s wrong and ill will against people of color, namely and visibly Blacks.
Mr. Plessy didn’t live to see his name being cleared and his effort being honored but his family can be proud that he made a difference in the face of desegregation.
Similarly, the Dred Scott Case, an 1857 decision that said no Black person who had been enslaved or was descended from a slave could ever become a U.S. citizen, was another dark stain on America’s legacy.
The ruling against Plessy in Plessy vs. Ferguson instituted a segregation law that ruled the land until the Supreme Court unanimously overruled it in 1954, in Brown vs. the Board of Education. Both cases fought against segregation laws that violated the 14th Amendment’s right to equal protection.
Because of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, nationwide schools were desegregated, and eventually, the Jim Crow laws were stripped away but persisted under the cover for a very long time. Remnants of it yet exist today, quietly kept.
Thanks to Plessy vs. Ferguson and Brown vs. Board of Education much change has happened regarding desegregation where all people of color are legally within their right to enter any business establishment, school, and/or transportation without being punished.
However, the nation knows that there exist remnants of segregation in society which is one of the reasons the nation has currently found itself so divided. This division is all about race and skin color.
Mr. Homer Plessy can truly rest in peace knowing that he made a stand and made a difference for Black people to be treated fairly and equally under the constitution.
Plessy, a thirty-year-old uneducated shoemaker who was light-skinned and was described by the court as someone who had one-eight African blood but it was not discernible, and he became the perfect person to take a stand in the train car protest as he did and was positioned strategically to do so by the Citizens Committee.
As a member of the Citizens Committee, a New Orleans group who fought to overcome segregated laws, Plessy was selected by this committee due to his main physical attribute, light-skinned, that afforded him to board the train and was black enough to be tossed off for doing so.
After Plessy vs. Ferguson ended, eight months later, Plessy pleaded guilty January 11, 1897 and was fined $25. Back in that time, $25 was a lot of money. The Citizens Committee collected donations and paid his fine and other legal costs.
After this, he lived in obscurity and discontinued his trade as a shoemaker. He worked as a laborer, warehouse worker, and clerk before becoming a collector for the Black-owned People’s Life Insurance Co.
Upon his death, 1925, he died with this conviction on his legacy. Fate took an interesting turn where the relatives of Plessy and John Howard Ferguson, the judge who oversaw his case became friends decades later forming a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights education.
Yes, it is time for Homer Plessy to rest in peace knowing not only that he has been pardoned, but his record blemish will also be cleared and a street is slated to be named in his honor in New Orleans.
Per the governor’s office, Plessy’s pardon is the first pardon under Louisiana’s 2006 Avery Alexander Act. Even in death, Homer Plessy’s stand is yet standing as other people convicted under laws that were intended to discriminate will be considered for a pardon.
In conclusion, history books, films, documentaries, and tv shows need to recognize this pardon and further acknowledge to the world how people of color have been mistreated due to their desegregation efforts.
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