get these nets
Veteran
11/12/21
Homer Plessy and the Black activists who fought segregation all the way to the Supreme Court
“Liberty has always had a hard road to travel, whenever prejudice was the consulted oracle. The United States will not be an exception to the rule, as long as race antipathy will be allowed to overshadow every other within our territory. But the obligation of the people is resistance to oppression.” –The Crusader, August 1891
One hundred and twenty-five years ago, the US Supreme Court delivered a 7-1 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, upholding a state’s right to segregate the races in “separate but equal” facilities.
The case originated in New Orleans as one of two test cases set up by a group of Creole of color activists. By appealing to the highest court in the land, the men behind Plessy v. Ferguson sought to halt the rolling back of major civil rights gains Black people achieved during Reconstruction. Their defeat in 1896 marked the end of an era of radical Black activism in New Orleans that began with the Civil War. The plaintiff in the case, Homer Plessy, was born in New Orleans to French-speaking free people of color on March 17, 1863. Plessy came of age during a time that was in many ways significantly different from that of his parents, Adolphe and Rosa Debergue Plessy. Slavery no longer existed, which meant neither did the category, “free person of color.”
Plessy could ride integrated streetcars and attend integrated schools. He could look forward to voting and perhaps imagined running for elected office one day. These rights had been hard won by French-speaking Creole and English-speaking Black activists and their white Radical Republican allies. The 1868 Louisiana constitution, which enshrined these “civil, political, and public rights” for all citizens, marked the culmination of their efforts.
Louisiana's reconstructed constitution was one of the most progressive of its kind, providing for Black male suffrage and equal rights for all Louisianians in public education and accommodations. This commemorative lithograph depicts the African American men elected to public office in 1868. (THNOC, 1979.183)
Yet, as Homer Plessy entered his teen years, a compromise resolving the contested 1876 presidential election ended Reconstruction, and conservative white Democrats quickly gained power in Louisiana. The new government began to dismantle advances in racial equality, beginning with integrated public schools.
Activists in New Orleans fought the resegregation of schools through mass protests and lawsuits but to no avail. A new state constitution approved in 1879 eliminated language guaranteeing equal rights to public places and ended public school integration.
In the face of these setbacks, a multigenerational group of Creole activists continued to organize during the 1880s. Stalwarts of the Reconstruction era, including newspaper editor Paul Trevigne, joined forces with emerging leaders like Rodolphe L. Desdunes and Louis A. Martinet. Now a young man in his 20s, Homer Plessy was part of this next generation of activists.
These men revitalized pre–Civil War institutions and created new ones. In 1886, for example, a group established the Justice, Protective, Educational, and Social Club to make sure “our rights as citizens of this State and of the United States [are] protected and respected.” The following year, Plessy, who was working as a shoemaker at the time, became vice president of the club.
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