Homer Plessy is arrested after boarding a…
June 1892 CE
The landmark case resulting from this incident, Plessy v. Ferguson, will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896.
New Orleans' large community of well-educated, often French-speaking free persons of color (gens de couleur libres), who had been free prior to the Civil War, fight against Jim Crow laws.
They had organized the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens Committee) to work for civil rights.
As part of their legal campaign, they had recruited one of their own, the light-skinned Plessy, to test whether Louisiana's newly enacted Separate Car Act is constitutional.
The court will rule that "separate but equal" accommodations are constitutional, effectively upholding Jim Crow measures.
In practice, African-American public schools and facilities are underfunded across the South.
The Supreme Court ruling contributes to this period as the nadir of race relations in the United States.
The rate of lynchings of black men is high across the South, as other states also disfranchise blacks and seek to impose Jim Crow.
Nativist prejudices also surface.
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