Homer Plessy Pardoned: His New Orleans Legacy, Tomb, and Street Name.
Homer Plessy (1862 – 1925)
On January 5, 2022, African American Homer Plessy was posthumously pardoned by Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards for refusing to leave a whites-only railroad car on the East Louisiana Railroad on June 7, 1892. After purchasing a first-class ticket from New Orleans to Covington, Plessy took his seat, informed the conductor of his racial status, and refused to move after the conductor told him he had to sit in the back. Plessy, a thirty-year old shoemaker who was 1/8 black (or light skinned enough to “pass” but black enough to be prosecuted for his skin color), was arrested for violating Louisiana’s Act 111 of 1890, known as the Separate Car Act, which mandated that all operating railroads provide “separate but equal accommodations” for whites and blacks. It prohibited customers from entering accommodations other than those assigned to them based on their race. The goal was to overturn the Act but instead the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Separate Car Act saying that it did not violated the 13th Amendment (which prohibited slavery) or the 14th (which granted full and equal citizenship to African Americans). It would be nearly 60 years before the court reversed the “separate but equal” doctrine in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954.
Homer Plessy’s Tomb in St. Louis Cemetery #1.
Plessy died in 1925 without much notice. In 1996, led by preservationists, his tomb was restored in St. Louis Cemetery #1. In 2017, five blocks of Press Street in the Bywater was renamed Homer Plessy Way to honor the man who fought segregation laws.
A plaque honoring Homer Plessy in the Bywater (photo 2018)
You can read more about Homer Plessy and other individuals in St. Louis Cemetery #1 in my book Stories from the St. Louis Cemeteries of New Orleans.
A large cement pillar located in the Claiborne Corridor honoring Homer Plessy and his fight against the Separate Car Act (photo 2017)