Homer+Plessy.LMNH

//Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 //  When Homer Adolph Plessy, a light skinned man who was one-eighth African American, took a seat in the whites only section of a Louisiana train and refused to move, he was arrested. Convicted of breaking a Louisiana Supreme Court, then to federal Supreme Court. The incident was planned in advance to test the statute, using Plessy, who appeared to be white, to show the folly of the law. Although the words "seperate but equal" do not appear in the court responses, the term came to describe a condition that persisted until 1954. They were far from equal.