Louisiana governor signs posthumous pardon for Homer Plessy

NEW ORLEANS — Gov. John Bel Edwards signed a posthumous pardon for Homer Plessy in a ceremony on Wednesday.

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Plessy was a Creole man arrested in 1892 after he refused to move to the section of a train car where members of the Black community were permitted to sit, The New Orleans Advocate reported.

His case went to the Supreme Court where, in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the court ruled that states could legally segregate on basis of race as long as it was “separate but equal.”

The next year, Plessy pleaded guilty to violating the Separate Car Act and had to pay a fine of $25, which accounting for inflation, is equivalent to more than $830 in 2022.

The Plessy v. Ferguson decision upheld Jim Crow laws and wasn’t challenged until 1954′s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and the start of the civil rights movement, the Advocate reported.

The Louisiana Board of Pardons voted unanimously to throw out Plessy’s conviction in November.

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