Louisiana Gov Pardons Plaintiff In Landmark U.S. 1896 Segregation Case

Louisiana's governor on Wednesday posthumously pardoned Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in the landmark 1896 US Supreme Court case that upheld the "separate but equal" doctrine and laid the legal foundation for decades of racial segregation, Kathleen Flynn reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: An illustrated portrait of Homer Plessy

Governor John Bel Edwards, who signed the pardon at a ceremony in New Orleans near the spot where Plessy was arrested in 1892 for riding a whites-only train car, traced a line from the historic case to racial inequities in US society today.

"The stroke of my pen on this pardon, while momentous, it doesn't erase generations of pain and discrimination," Bel Edwards said.

"We can all acknowledge we have a long ways to go, but this pardon is a step in the right direction."

The official act follows a state board's unanimous decision in November to recommend a pardon of Plessy, who deliberately sat in a whites-only rail car to test a Jim Crow-era law aimed at marginalizing him and other Black citizens after the Civil War.

Plessy, a shoemaker who was active in a civil rights group, was immediately arrested. His case was heard in Louisiana by Judge John Howard Ferguson, who ruled against Plessy, setting off a chain of events that led to the 1896 Supreme Court case. Descendants of the Plessy and Ferguson families were at the event.

Plessy, who was 30 years old at the time of his arrest, pleaded guilty in 1897 following the Supreme Court ruling and paid a $25 fine. He died in 1925.

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