NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana board has posthumously pardoned Homer Plessy, the namesake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1896 “separate but equal” ruling affirming state segregation laws.
The state Board of Pardon issued its decision Friday, clearing the Creole man’s record of a conviction for refusing to leave a whites-only train car in New Orleans.
The decision now goes to Gov. John Bel Edwards, who has final say over the pardon. Plessy was arrested in 1892 and pleaded guilty to violating the Separate Car Act after the Supreme Court’s ruling. He died in 1925 with the conviction on his record.
Plessy boarded the train as part of a civil rights group’s efforts to challenge a state law that mandated segregated seating. He pleaded guilty before Judge John Howard Ferguson to violating the act and was fined $25.
The Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that state racial segregation laws didn’t violate the Constitution as long as the facilities for the races were of equal quality.
More than a century after Plessy appeared before Ferguson, their descendants became friends, forming a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights education.
Other recent efforts have acknowledged Plessy’s role in history, including a 2018 vote by the New Orleans City Council to rename a section of the street where he tried to board the train in his honor.
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