Biography homer plessy quotes on freedom

Down across the years the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision of symbolized segregation and stood as law until Brown v.

What did homer plessy do

Board of Education in But who was Homer Plessy and what happened to him after the historic moment of injustice? What year he was born and his name and pedigree is a jumble of information. No matter the confusion, he was clearly born a free person of color in a Creole-speaking family. Coming of age during the Reconstruction-era in Louisiana, he attended integrated schools in a society where Black men had the franchise and interracial marriage was legal.

But with the end of Reconstruction, particularly the Hayes-Tilden Electoral College vote and the compromise that brought about the removal of federal troops from the South, many of the privileges enjoyed by Plessy and others no longer existed. By the s, Plessy joined a number of activists in the fight to restore their civil rights.

In , he served as vice president of the 50 person Justice, Protective, Educational, and Social Club, a group dedicated to reforming public education. In a state criminal district court, Judge John Howard Ferguson ruled against Plessy, and thereby upheld the law on the ground that the state had the right to regulate railroads within its borders.