Plessy Day: Celebrating Civil Rights Pioneer Homer Plessy

To some degree, we all understand the audacity it takes to speak out against injustice, the willingness to place yourself in danger for the possibility of achieving equity. That kind of sacrifice requires extraordinary courage. In 1892, Homer Plessy, a 30-year-old multi-racial, Black man from New Orleans, embodied that courage when he agreed to help challenge the Separate Car Act of 1890, a segregation law that prohibited Black Americans from being seated with White Americans on Louisiana’s railway cars.

At a time when Black Americans faced continuous threats of racial violence, public humiliation, and legalized discrimination throughout the South, Plessy understood the risks attached to his actions. His protest could threaten his safety, livelihood, and future. Yet, he used himself and his identity as a tool of protest, and transformed a train ride into one of the most significant acts of Civil Rights resistance in American history.

The subsequent case — Plessy v. Ferguson — emerged from a long tradition of Black resistance to racial discrimination in this country and in Louisiana.  As lawmakers worked tirelessly to dismantle the political and social gains that Black Americans had achieved after the Civil War, segregation laws became increasingly common. The response to these laws should not be shocking; coalitions were built, groups like the Citizens Committee, made up of Afro-Creole men, freedmen, and their allies, would serve as a counterweight to test the constitutionality of these laws, with the hope of stopping them in their tracks.

The goal was simple: to end the Separate Car Act of 1890, which segregated train cars by race. And like all acts of civil disobedience, the Citizens Committee had organized and thoroughly planned its actions.

They partnered with the East Louisiana Railroad Company and planned an altercation between Mr. Plessy and the conductor that would lead to his arrest, so Civil Rights activists could formally challenge the law in court.

On June 7, 1892, Plessy purchased a first-class ticket from the East Louisiana Railroad train at the corner of Press and Royal streets in New Orleans. Plessy boarded the train, took a seat and informed the conductor he would not be leaving the white’s only railcar. He was swiftly removed from the train and arrested, all according to plan.

This act started a series of legal proceedings that would lead to the 1896 Supreme Court decision to uphold segregation under the doctrine of “separate but equal.”

The outcome of which was devastating. For Black Americans, the ruling reinforced systems of racial inequity, voter suppression, and economic exclusion.

I often think about Homer Plessy and the strength and belief he had in himself to be the face of change.