As Lofgren writes, Tennessee, having passed the Reconstruction eras first equal accommodations law in the South, had already become the first to subvert it with an equal-but-separate transportation law in 1881. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. The committee chose a moment in history and a place in the citys economic landscape (the Press Street Railroad Yards) that would most effectively draw attention to their cause. But Plessy returned to obscurity, and never returned to shoemaking. (Why public swimming pools are still haunted by segregations legacy.). You know, in my consciousness," said Dillingham. In his lone dissenting opinion, which would become a classic of American civil rights jurisprudence, Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan insisted that the court had ignored the obvious purpose of the Separate Car Act, which was. Keith Plessy, whose great-great-grandfather was Plessys cousin, said donations collected by the committee paid the fine and other legal costs. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. John Ferguson currently lives in Lexington, NC; in the past John has also lived in Mount Pleasant SC and Linwood NC. John Bel Edwards posthumously pardoned Homer Plessy, the Black man whose arrest sparked the SCOTUS ruling that cemented separate but equal into law. Called Jim Crow laws, these statutes paid lip service to equality so that they did not violate the 14th Amendment, which was ratified during Reconstruction and provided U.S. citizens equal protection under the law. Please enter your email address and we will send you an email with a reset password code. Please try again later. Department of Archives and Special Collections, Teachers' Domain Civil Rights Special Collection. As Justice Joseph Bradleywrote for the majority,there must be some stage in the process of his elevation when he [a man who has emerged from slavery] takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws.. Found more than one record for entered Email, You need to confirm this account before you can sign in. Critically important to the legal team is Plessys color that he has seven eighths Caucasian and one eighth African blood, as Supreme Court Justice Henry Billings Brownwill write in his majority opinion, an observation that refers to the uniquely American one drop rule that a person with any African blood, no matter how little, is considered to be black. Ferguson was born the third and last child to Baptist parents (John H. Ferguson & Sarah Davis Luce) on June 10, 1838 in Chilmark, Massachusetts. He is buried with his wife and other Earhart family members in Lafayette Cemetery # 1 in the old part of New Orleans. Why not require all colored people to walk on one side of the street and the whites on the other? Ferguson was born the third and last child to Baptist parents (John H. Ferguson & Sarah Davis Luce) on June 10, 1838 in Chilmark, Massachusetts. The truth is that no one involved inPlessyknew they were on a longer march toBrown,or that their case would become one of the most recognizable in history, or that the sentence that the Supreme Court handed down would take up less than a sentence really, just three words in the American mind. Even the East Louisiana Railroad, conductor Dowling and Detective Cain are in on the scheme. The Plessy & Ferguson Foundation states that the 1892 arrest of Homer Plessy was part of an organized effort by the Citizens Committee to challenge Louisiana's Separate Car Act. These materials may be graphic or reflect biases. John Howard Ferguson (June 10, 1838 - November 12, 1915) was an American lawyer and judge from Louisiana, most famous as the defendant in the Plessy v. Ferguson case. They filed their appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 5, 1893. The committee chose Plessy to challenge the law because though he looked white (a later brief claimed he was 7/8 white and 1/8 African), but his Black ancestry would have required an entire separate-but-equal car under the law. Homer A. Plessy Day was established June 7, 2005, by the Crescent City Peace Alliance, former Louisiana Gov. The fundamental objection, therefore, to the statute is that it interferes with the personal freedom of citizens. During oral arguments, Albion W. Tourge, Plessy's attorney, told the court that the law was unconstitutional and . Take it away without due process, based on a train conductors casual and arbitrary scan, and you rob a man, colored or white (at the time, especially white), of something as valuable to him as his education, income or land. Add to your scrapbook. Foundation Board Members include: Raynard Sanders, Ph.D, John Howard Ferguson IV, Alexander Pierre Tureaud, Jr., Katharine Ferguson Roberts, Jackson Knowles, Phoebe Chase Ferguson, Keith M. Plessy, Brenda Billips Square, Keith Weldon Medley, Ron Bechet, Stephen Plessy, Judy Bajoie, and Neferteri Plessy. Legal equality was adequately respected in the act because the accommodations provided for each race were required to be equal and because the racial segregation of passengers did not by itself imply the legal inferiority of either racea conclusion supported, he reasoned, by numerous state-court decisions that had affirmed the constitutionality of laws establishing separate public schools for white and African American children. (For similar reasons, some of those tracking thetwo affirmative action casespending before the current Supreme Court are concerned that those cases may get drowned by more pressing headlines.) John Howard Ferguson was born into a family that had been for generations part of the Martha's Vineyard Master Mariners. Foundation Board Members include: Raynard Sanders, Ph.D, John Howard Ferguson IV, Alexander Pierre Tureaud, Jr., Katharine Ferguson Roberts, Jackson Knowles, Phoebe Chase Ferguson, Keith M. Plessy, Brenda Billips Square, Keith Weldon Medley, Ron Bechet, Stephen Plessy, Judy Bajoie, and Neferteri Plessy. His decision was upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court. In a nod to the historic implications of the 1896 Plessy v. Fergusonruling, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has pardoned Plessy for defying the law. Plessy then appealed the case to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which affirmed the decision that the Louisiana law was cons*utional. This court should make it clear that that is not what our Constitution stands for.. There he presided over the case. On this special day, we remember Plessy, a shoemaker who was arrested on June 7, 1892, at the corner of Press and Royal streets in New Orleans. 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. Learn more about merges. He lived the rest of life as a convicted criminal. The decision to use civil disobedience to challenge Act 111 was part of a strategy intelligently crafted by the Citizens Committee. Kate Dillingham's great-great-grandfather, John Harlan, was a one-time Kentucky slaveholder who became a U.S. Supreme Court justice, and in 1896 he was the lone vote against segregation and in support of Plessy. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate, or jump to a slide with the slide dots. Of course discerning minds like Tourge saw through such theories, but, as Lofgren illustrates in a table summarizing a 1960 study by historian of anthropology George W. Stocking Jr., among 50 social scientists publishing journal articles in the years leading up toPlessy, 94 percent believed in the existence of a racial hierarchy and in differences between the mental traits (intelligence, temperament, etc.) When Plessy refused to move to the car designated for Black passengers, he was confronted by a private detectivehired by the committeewho had arresting rights. Upon finishing his study, he relocated to New Orleans. Why may it [the state] not require all red-headed people to ride in a separate car? At the same time, for the sake of argument, Brown wrote, even if ones color was critical to his reputation (and thus constituted a property right), he and the Court were unable to see how [the Louisiana] statute deprives him of, or in any way affects his right to, such property. (Perhaps this was because attorneys for the state had already conceded that the law, as written, could be interpreted as having a crack in its immunity shield for erring rail lines and conductors.). The Fergusons raised three sons (Walter Judson, Milo & Donald Ferguson) in Burtheville (Uptown New Orleans) at 1500 Henry Clay Avenue. ), Reinforcing their views on race were legislators and judges. There he met and married in July 1866, Virginia Butler Earhart, daughter of Thomas Jefferson Earhart, a staunch and outspoken abolitionist from Pennsylvania. The son, grandson . Her historic refusal to sit in the back of a Montgomery, Alabama bus was foreshadowed 59 years before her time by a proud shoemaker from New Orleans. In 2009, descendants of Ferguson and Plessy formed the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation of New Orleans to honor the successes of the civil rights movement. The purpose is not to erase what happened 125 years ago but to acknowledge the wrong that was done, Phoebe Ferguson, the great-great-granddaughter of the county judge who imposed Plessys punishment, said during the ceremony. There are at least 2,787 records for John Howard Ferguson in our database alone. Previously sponsored memorials or famous memorials will not have this option. The Supreme Courts infamous separate but equal ruling in 1896 stemmed from Homer Plessys pioneering act of civil disobedience. On February 12, 2009, they partnered with the Crescent City Peace Alliance and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts in placing a historical marker at the corner of Press Street and Royal Street, the site of Homer Plessy's arrest in New Orleans in 1892. Also, in between, all the main players in the case died: Walker in 1898, Tourge in France in 1905, Ferguson in 1915, Martinet in 1917 and Homer Plessy in 1925 (in case youre wondering, a few months after the Supreme Courts ruling, Plessy pled guilty to defying the Louisiana Separate Cars Act and paid his $25 fine). Southern states replaced the Reconstruction-era laws with those that mandated the separation of the races. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens, Harlan had reminded the Plessy majority(ironically using the same inkwell the late Chief Justice Roger Taney had used in penning the infamousDred Scottdecision of 1857, at least according to legend). Accordingly, if the wronged party be a white man assigned to a colored coach, Brown wrote, he may have his action for damages against the company for being deprived of his so called property. Please complete the captcha to let us know you are a real person. The governors office described this as the first pardon under Louisianas 2006 Avery Alexander Act, which allows pardons for people convicted under laws that were intended to discriminate. 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. Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson, the great-great-granddaughter of John Howard Ferguson, the judge who oversaw his case in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, now lead a nonprofit that . He was simply deprived of the liberty of doing as he pleased.. The email does not appear to be a valid email address. Please ensure you have given Find a Grave permission to access your location in your browser settings. Judge John Howard Ferguson died in New Orleans at the age of 77 on November 12, 1915. Phoebe Ferguson and Keith Plessy have known each other for years. Ferguson served in the Louisiana Legislature and practiced law in New Orleans until he was tapped in 1892 for a judgeship at the criminal district court, Section A, for the Parish of New Orleans, Louisiana. "It is this unjust criminal conviction that has brought us here today," Ferguson said. Perhaps what is most amazing aboutPlessy v. Fergusonis howun-amazing it was at the time. This June 3, 2018 photo shows a marker on the burial site for Homer Plessy at St. Louis No. The accommodations on the train for both white and the colored were said "to be separate but equal." 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There he met and married in July 1866, Virginia Butler Earhart, daughter of Thomas Jefferson Earhart, a staunch and outspoken abolitionist from Pennsylvania. Inside the Orleans Parish criminal courthouse in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1892, Homer Plessy was charged for sitting in the Whites-only section of a train car. You have chosen this person to be their own family member. As highlighted last week, the legal history of Jim Crow accelerated in 1883, when the Supreme Court struck down the federalCivil Rights Act of 1875for using the 14th Amendment to root out private (as opposed to state) discrimination. Read all 100 Facts onThe Root. As manager of this memorial you can add or update the memorial using the Edit button below. You can customize the cemeteries you volunteer for by selecting or deselecting below. Photograph by Russell Lee, MPI/Getty Images. of races. (Ill let you guess which race almost always came out on top. Old cells hang around as we age, doing damage to the body. In Plessy's case, however, he concluded that the state could choose to regulate railroad companies that operated solely within the state of Louisiana and declared the Separate Car Act to be cons*utional in intrastate cases.
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