Plessy

Plessy refers to Homer Adolph Plessy (c. 1863–1925), an African American New Orleanian whose attempt to challenge racial segregation on public transportation became a defining moment in United States civil rights history. Plessy was seven-eighths white and one-eighth Black, and in 1892 he sat in a “Whites” railroad car in defiance of Louisiana’s Separate Car Act. He was arrested after refusing to move to the “colored” car. The Citizens’ Committee of New Orleans organized a legal challenge to the law, bringing suit against Judge John Howard Ferguson. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court as Plessy v. Ferguson.

In 1896 the Supreme Court, in a 7-1 decision written by Justice Henry Billings Brown, upheld the validity of the Louisiana statute and endorsed the doctrine of “separate but equal,” allowing state-imposed racial segregation to persist as long as facilities were purportedly equal. The lone dissent was written by Justice John Marshall Harlan, who argued that the Constitution was color-blind and that state laws enforcing segregation violated equal protection of the laws.

The Plessy decision became a cornerstone of the Jim Crow era, underpinning legalized segregation across many public accommodations in the United States for decades. It remained in effect until it was overturned in part by Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which held that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional and catalyzed broader civil rights reforms.