Homer Plessy

Who was Homer Plessy?

Homer Plessy was the American Creole plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Arrested, tried and convicted in New Orleans of a violation of one of Louisiana's racial segregation laws, he appealed through Louisiana state courts to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost. The resulting "separate-but-equal" decision against him had wide consequences for civil rights in the United States. The decision legalized state-mandated segregation anywhere in the United States so long as the facilities provided for both blacks and whites were putatively "equal".

The son of free African-Americans, Homer Plessy was born on St. Patrick's Day in 1862, when federal occupation troops under General Benjamin Franklin Butler had liberated African Americans in New Orleans. Blacks could then marry whomever they chose, sit in any streetcar seat, and attend, briefly, integrated schools.

As an adult, Plessy found that those gains from the period of federal occupation during the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era had been abolished after troops were withdrawn in 1877 on orders of U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes.

On any other day in 1892, Plessy with his pale skin color could have ridden in the train car restricted to white passengers without notice. He was classified "7/8 white" or an octoroon according to the language of the time. Although it is often interpreted as Plessy had only one great grandmother of African descent, both of his parents are identified as free persons of color on his birth certificate. The racial categorization is based on appearance rather than genealogy.