More than 100 years after the fact, Louisiana’s governor yesterday pardons Homer Plessy, the black man arrested for refusing to leave a whites-only railroad car in 1892. His refusal led to the US supreme court ruling that stipulated, “separate, but equal.”
Homer Plessy boarded the train as a member of a small civil rights group. He was arrested, and his case reached the US supreme court. It led to a ruling in 1896 known as Plessy versus Ferguson.
That solidified whites-only spaces in public accommodations such as transportation, hotels and schools, for decades in southern states.
Yesterday, Homer Plessy was pardoned for his alleged violation by the governor of Louisiana.
