This is the third entry in our series of Closer Looks on some of the most famous Supreme Court plaintiffs.
Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in the notorious 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the doctrine of “separate but equal,” is generally believed to have been born on March 17, 1862 or 1863, in New Orleans. His father, Joseph, a carpenter, and his mother, Rosa Debergue, a seamstress, were both free Creole peoples of French and African descent. Plessy’s paternal grandfather Germain Plessy was a white Frenchman who moved to New Orleans after the Haitian Revolution. Both of his maternal grandparents were multiracial.
Plessy grew up in Louisiana during the Reconstruction era when Black political participation expanded and schools were integrated.
Plessy’s father passed away when he was around only seven years old. Two years later, his mother married Victor M. Dupart, a clerk for the U.S. Postal Service, who also worked on the side as a shoemaker. Dupart was likely responsible for one of Plessy’s first introductions to civil rights activism. Dupart was a member of the Unification Movement of 1873, a multiracial coalition that pushed for racial equality.
Plessy, like his stepfather, became a shoemaker. Also like his stepfather, he was active in civil rights organizing in Louisiana when many of Reconstruction’s gains were dismantled and Jim Crow segregation was imposed. In 1887, he became the vice president of the Justice, Protective, Educational, and Social Club, an organization that worked to ensure “our rights as citizens of this State and of the United States [are] protected and respected.”
In 1890, Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which required separate railcars for Black and white passengers. Under this law, Plessy, who described himself as “seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African blood,” was classified as “colored.” Plessy, through the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens), a civil rights organization, agreed to be a plaintiff for a test case to challenge the constitutionality of the Separate Car Act.
On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket for a train from New Orleans to Covington, Louisiana, on the East Louisiana Railroad Company’s Number 8 train. The conductor, J.J. Dowling, approached Plessy and asked him, “Are you a colored man?” After Plessy answered in the affirmative, Dowling said: “Then you will have to retire to the colored car.” After refusing to move cars, a private detective, Chris Cain, along with a group of passengers, forced Plessy out of the train. Notably, Dowling, Cain, and the East Louisiana Railroad Company were all aware that Plessy was attempting to establish standing for a test case and were in contact and cooperating with the Comité ahead of time.
Plessy was charged with violating the Separate Car Act, and he argued that this was unconstitutional under the Constitution’s 13th and 14th Amendments. In November 1892, Judge John Howard Ferguson upheld the legality of the act. A month later, the Louisiana Supreme Court unanimously affirmed Ferguson’s decision. Plessy appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In May 1896, the Supreme Court held that the Separate Car Act did not violate the Constitution’s 13th or 14th Amendments, establishing the doctrine of “separate but equal,” which allowed for the government to racially segregate groups if the facilities were of “equal” quality. Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote the sole dissenting opinion, declaring that “[o]ur Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Nearly 60 years later, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court rejected Plessy’s “separate but equal” doctrine in the educational context, a decision that eventually led to the dismantling of the framework upheld in that case.
After the Supreme Court’s decision, Plessy returned to Ferguson’s courtroom where he entered a guilty plea and paid a $25 fine for violating the Separate Car Act.
Following the case, Plessy returned to private life. The formation of major shoemaking companies resulted in a decline in local shoemakers, so Plessy sought employment in other fields, including as a laborer, clerk, warehouseman, and an insurance collector. He remained active in New Orleans’ philanthropic and fraternal organizations including the Société des Francs-Amis, the Cosmopolitan Mutual Aid Association, and the Scottish Rites Masons.
Plessy passed away on March 1, 1925. He was interred in the Debergue-Blanco family tomb in Saint Louis Cemetery located in New Orleans. In 2022, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards posthumously pardoned Plessy. The proclamation signed by Edwards praised Plessy for his “heroism and patriotism,” as well as his “unselfish sacrifice to advocate for and to demand equality and human dignity for all of Louisiana’s citizens.”
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