Plessy+v.+Ferguson

Plessy v. Ferguson Links

 =Plessy and Ferguson unveil plaque today marking their ancestors' actions=

by Katy Reckdahl, The Times-PicayuneWednesday February 11, 2009, 6:50 PM
TED JACKSON / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE Keith Plessy, right and Phoebe Ferguson stand on the railroad tracks at the corner of Royal and Press Streets on Wednesday where on June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy was arrested after boarding a train designated for whites only. • 2 p.m. Corner of Royal and Press streets. Open to the public. • Speakers include: Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Bernette Johnson, Tulane professor Lawrence N. Powell, UNO professor Raphael Cassimere and historian/author Keith Weldon Medley Today, Plessy versus Ferguson becomes Plessy and Ferguson, when descendants of opposing parties in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court segregation case stand together to unveil a plaque at the former site of the Press Street Railroad Yards. Standing behind Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson will be a large group of students, scholars, officials and activists who worked for years to honor the site where in 1892, Treme shoemaker Homer Plessy, a light-skinned black man, was arrested for sitting in a railway car reserved for white people.  People often think that his ancestor held some responsibility for the legalized segregation known as "separate but equal, " said Keith Plessy, 52, a longtime New Orleans hotel bellman whose great-grandfather was Homer Plessy's first cousin. In actuality, Homer Plessy boarded that train as part of a carefully orchestrated effort to create a civil-rights test case, to fight the proliferation of segregationist laws in the South. Keith Plessy first learned about his relationship to the case from his teachers at Valena C. Jones Elementary School, who called him to the front of the room as they discussed the case. But his textbooks simply listed the name of the case and its result: a half-century of "separate but equal" schools, drinking fountains and buses. Phoebe Ferguson, 51, a documentary filmmaker, left New Orleans in 1967 but moved back after discovering her great-great-grandfather's role in the infamous legal fight. Judge John Howard Ferguson ruled against Plessy from his bench in Orleans Parish Criminal Court. The judge was born in Massachusetts and had strong ties to abolitionists, she said. So she doesn't think he was a racist. Still, Phoebe Ferguson can't quite get over the powerful impact his decision had on the black community, which would endure a half-century of government-sanctioned segregation. "That a part of my family started Jim Crow is kind of a load to carry, " she said. "I wish I could change that." Three years before Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson met, students not far from the site of the former railroad yard, at Frederick A. Douglass Senior High School, began writing about Homer Plessy and other New Orleans civil-rights heroes. The students worked the past three years with the Crescent City Peace Alliance to recognize the 9th Ward site, helped by a $11,000 grant from Transforma Projects New Orleans, said the Alliance's Reggie Lawson. In a book published under the auspices of the school's writing program, Students at the Center, Demetrious Jones summed up the Plessy case: "As you can see, 1892 was a mixed-up time. Someone had to do something fast. This is where the Citizens' Committee came in. This group of people mapped out a plan to challenge the Separate Car Act. They recruited Homer Plessy to get arrested, because they knew he could pass for white and that he didn't have any children to take care of. This was important, because at this time in New Orleans, " she wrote, "he could have been killed." A central figure behind today's event is Keith Weldon Medley, whose book "We As Freemen" details players on both sides of the Plessy v. Ferguson fight against segregation. Medley wrote the text for the new plaque, just as he wrote the text for a plaque on Plessy's grave in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. The Douglass students read his book to learn about the case. And Phoebe Ferguson and Keith Plessy consider him the midwife of their friendship because the two met at a book signing of Medley's in 2004. Most of what they know about the case comes from Medley's years of research, the two say. Through Medley, Plessy met Bobby Duplissey, a relative from the white side of his family who had researched their ancestry all the way back to France. Plessy, born in 1863 on St. Patrick's Day, grew up at a time when black people in New Orleans could marry whomever they chose, sit in any streetcar seat, and attend integrated schools, Medley said. But as an adult, those gains from the Reconstruction era eroded. On any other day in 1892, Plessy could have ridden in the car restricted to white passengers without notice. According to the parlance of the time, he was classified "7/8 white." In order to pose a clear test to the state's 1890 separate-car law, the Citizens' Committee in advance notified the railroad -- which had opposed the law because it required adding more cars to its trains. On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket for the commuter train that ran to Covington, sat down in the car for white riders only and the conductor asked whether he was a colored man, Medley said. The committee also hired a private detective with arrest powers to take Plessy off the train at Press and Royal streets, to ensure that he was charged with violating the state's separate-car law. Everything the committee plotted went as planned -- except for the final court decision, in 1896. By then the composition of the U.S. Supreme Court had gained a more segregationist tilt, and the committee knew it would likely lose. But it chose to press the cause anyway, Medley said. "It was a matter of honor for them, that they fight this to the very end." These days Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson act as if they've been friends their entire lives. They ask about family members, track each other's work schedules. Through the newly formed Plessy and Ferguson Foundation for Education and Reconciliation, they hope to provide more depth to textbook writers' treatment of the Plessy case, create more historical markers for little-known figures and promote use of Louisiana history as a window into the past. "You don't know American history until you know Louisiana history, " Plessy said. Even today, he predicted, many neighbors of the new marker, at Press and Royal streets, will be surprised to learn that the corner's nondescript span of railroad track was the backdrop for a significant event in this country's history.
 * Today's ceremony**
 * 'A mixed-up time'**
 * Dedicated researchers**
 * A beautiful friendship**