Louisiana’s governor posthumously pardoned Homer Plessy, the Black man whose arrest for refusing to leave a whites-only railroad car in 1892 led to the Supreme Court ruling that cemented “separate but equal” into U.S. law for half a century, reported The Associated Press.
The state Board of Pardons in November recommended
the pardon for Plessy, who boarded the rail car as a member of a small civil
rights group hoping to overturn a state law segregating trains. Instead, the
protest led to the 1896 ruling known as Plessy v. Ferguson, which solidified
whites-only spaces in public accommodations such as transportation, hotels and
schools for decades.
At a ceremony held near the spot near where Plessy
was arrested, Gov. John Bel Edwards said he was “beyond grateful” to help
restore Plessy’s “legacy of the rightness of his cause … undefiled by the
wrongness of his conviction.”
Keith Plessy, whose great-great-grandfather was
Plessy’s cousin, called the event “truly a blessed day for our ancestors … and
for children not yet born.”
Since the pardon board vote, “I’ve had the feeling
that my feet are not touching the ground because my ancestors are carrying me,”
he said.
Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote in the 7-1
decision: “Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish
distinctions based upon physical differences.”
Justice John Harlan was the only dissenting voice,
writing that he believed the ruling “will, in time, prove to be quite as
pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott Case” — an
1857 decision that said no Black person who had been enslaved or was descended
from a slave could ever become a U.S. citizen.
The Plessy v. Ferguson ruling allowing racial
segregation across American life stood as the law of the land until the Supreme
Court unanimously overruled it in 1954, in Brown v. the Board of Education.
Both cases argued that segregation laws violated the 14th Amendment’s right to
equal protection.
The Brown decision led to widespread public school
desegregation and the eventual stripping away of Jim Crow laws that
discriminated against Black Americans.
Plessy was a member of the Citizens Committee, a New
Orleans group trying to overcome laws that rolled back post-Civil War advances
in equality.
The 30-year-old shoemaker lacked the business,
political and educational accomplishments of most of the other members, Keith
Weldon Medley wrote in the book ”We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson.” But his
light skin — court papers described him as someone whose “one eighth African
blood” was “not discernable” — positioned him for the train car protest.
“His one attribute was being white enough to gain
access to the train and black enough to be arrested for doing so,” Medley
wrote.
Eight months after the ruling in his case, Plessy
pleaded guilty and was fined $25 at a time when 25 cents would buy a pound of
round steak and 10 pounds of potatoes. He died in 1925 with the conviction on
his record.
Keith Plessy said donations collected by the
committee paid the fine and other legal costs. But Plessy returned to
obscurity, and never returned to shoemaking.
He worked alternately as a laborer, warehouse worker
and clerk before becoming a collector for the Black-owned People’s Life
Insurance Company, Medley wrote. He died in 1925 with the conviction on his
record.
Relatives of Plessy and John Howard Ferguson, the
judge who oversaw his case in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, became
friends decades later and formed a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights
education.
The purpose of the pardon “is not to erase what
happened 125 years ago but to acknowledge the wrong that was done,” said Phoebe
Ferguson, the great-great-granddaughter of the judge.
Other recent efforts have acknowledged Plessy’s role
in history, including a 2018 vote by the New Orleans City Council to rename a
section of the street where he tried to board the train in his honor.
The governor’s office described this as the first
pardon under Louisiana’s 2006 Avery Alexander Act, which allows pardons for people
convicted under laws that were intended to discriminate.
Former state Sen. Edwin Murray said he originally
wrote the act to automatically pardon anyone convicted of breaking a law
written to encode discrimination. He said he made it optional after people
arrested for civil rights protests told him they considered the arrests a badge
of honor.
To read more CLICK HERE
No comments:
Post a Comment