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18927 June 1892 – 18 May 1896 · Press Street (Homer Plessy Way) and Royal Street, New Orleans

Plessy v. Ferguson

Whitewashed family tombs in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans, where Homer Plessy is buried
Photo: Ubi Desperare Nescio. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In a planned challenge organised by New Orleans' Comité des Citoyens, Homer Plessy, a shoemaker of mixed ancestry, sat in a whites-only railway car and was arrested at Press and Royal streets. In 1896 the Supreme Court upheld the state's segregation law, making 'separate but equal' the legal basis of Jim Crow until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Louisiana pardoned Plessy in 2022.

Sites

  1. Site 1: Plessy v. Ferguson markerPlaque at the rail crossing where Plessy was arrested, unveiled by both families' descendants in 2009.Map ↗
  2. Site 2: Homer Plessy's tomb, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1Family tomb in the city's oldest surviving cemetery.Map ↗

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