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---
title: Plessy v. Ferguson: Louisiana Gov. Pardons Homer Plessy
description: Gov. John Bel Edwards pardons Homer Plessy of 'Plessy v. Ferguson,' the Supreme Court case that paved way for Jim Crow segregation laws
canonical: https://time.com/6128436/homer-plessy-ferguson-pardon/
author: Olivia B. Waxman
article:opinion: false
article:content_tier: free
article:published_time: 2022-01-05T13:21:37.000Z
article:modified_time: 2023-12-12T00:10:36.000Z
article:section: History
og:title: 'A Long Time Coming'
og:description: Louisiana Governor pardons Homer Plessy, 125 years after SCOTUS "separate but equal" ruling
og:url: https://time.com/6128436/homer-plessy-ferguson-pardon/
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og:image:alt: Plessy-Pardon
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twitter:card: summary_large_image
twitter:title: 'A Long Time Coming'
twitter:description: Louisiana Governor pardons Homer Plessy, 125 years after SCOTUS "separate but equal" ruling
twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcb2a4e53ec8ce7b4/698a21368fd2ee6082363606/Homer-Plessy-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9
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![](https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcb2a4e53ec8ce7b4/698a21368fd2ee6082363606/Homer-Plessy-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9)


# Louisiana Gov. Pardons Homer Plessy, 125 Years After SCOTUS ‘Separate But Equal’ Ruling

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/DOqeek4G.m3u8" -->
## Video: After Ahmaud Arbery: Facing the Past, Moving Forward

[Watch (HLS stream): After Ahmaud Arbery: Facing the Past, Moving Forward](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/DOqeek4G.m3u8) (12:09)

![After Ahmaud Arbery: Facing the Past, Moving Forward](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/DOqeek4G/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2021-11-22. What Ahmaud Arbery’s death has meant for Brunswick, Ga., the place where he lived and died._


![Olivia B. Waxman](https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf3c95204947ba81f/6989408e97cdff3ae16b6e48/o_waxman.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1:1)

by 

[Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)


![Olivia B. Waxman](https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf3c95204947ba81f/6989408e97cdff3ae16b6e48/o_waxman.jpg?branch=production&width=96&quality=75&auto=webp)

## Olivia B. Waxman


Staff Writer

Updated: Dec 12, 2023 12:10 AM UTCPublished: Jan 5, 2022 1:21 PM UTC

What Ahmaud Arbery’s death has meant for Brunswick, Ga., the place where he lived and died. 

![Olivia B. Waxman](https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf3c95204947ba81f/6989408e97cdff3ae16b6e48/o_waxman.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1:1)

by 

[Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)


![Olivia B. Waxman](https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf3c95204947ba81f/6989408e97cdff3ae16b6e48/o_waxman.jpg?branch=production&width=96&quality=75&auto=webp)

## Olivia B. Waxman


Staff Writer

Updated: Dec 12, 2023 12:10 AM UTCPublished: Jan 5, 2022 1:21 PM UTC

On Jan. 11, 1897, Homer Plessy pleaded guilty in a New Orleans district court for sitting in a whites-only train car, eight months after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Louisiana’s Separate Car Act and a doctrine of “separate but equal” legislation that made way for segregation laws across the U.S.

Now, nearly 125 years later, Plessy’s conviction has been wiped from his record. On Jan. 5, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards signed a posthumous pardon for Plessy during a ceremony in New Orleans.


“The stroke of my pen on this pardon, while momentous, it doesn’t erase generations of pain and discrimination. It doesn’t …fix all of our present challenges. We can all acknowledge we have a long ways to go. But this pardon is a step in the right direction,” Edwards said. “I am beyond grateful that I have a small part to play in ensuring that Homer Plessy’s legacy will be entirely defined by the rightness of his cause and undefiled by an unjust criminal conviction.”

**Read more:** [_Segregation Has Gotten Worse, Not Better, and It’s Fueling the Wealth Gap Between Black and White Americans_](https://time.com/5855900/segregation-wealth-gap/)

Keith Plessy, Homer Plessy’s first cousin three times removed, said he experienced a wave of emotion when he first heard that Edwards would sign the pardon.

“My left eye gave up, and a tear just rolled down the side of my face,” he tells TIME. “It felt like I was not standing on my feet. It’s surreal.”

The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office submitted the application for a pardon on Nov. 5 in what’s believed to be the first use of [a 2006 state law](http://calendar.google.com), which allows people—as well as the descendants of people—convicted of breaking state or local laws designed to “maintain or enforce racial separation or discrimination” to apply for pardons. The application comes out of the office’s civil rights division, which has been tasked with looking for wrongful convictions.


“Although my predecessor many years ago prosecuted \[Plessy\], he should not have,” Jason Williams, Orleans Parish District Attorney, tells TIME. “I think it’s really important that we talk about the broad discretion that prosecutors have, because the ability to prosecute someone under the law does not always mean that district attorneys and prosecutors and states attorneys should.”

## **The history behind** **_Plessy v. Ferguson_**

On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy—a mixed-race shoemaker—was arrested for sitting in a whites-only East Louisiana Railroad car and violating the state’s 1890 Separate Car Act, which [said](https://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1-segregated/separate-but-equal.html) that railroads had to have “equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored, races.” Plessy had boarded the train as part of an organized effort by a local civil rights group called the Citizens Committee to raise awareness about the law. Five months later, on Nov. 18, 1892, Judge John H. Ferguson ruled that his actions had broken it.

The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But four years later, on May 18, 1896, the justices ruled 7-1 to uphold Ferguson’s decision in favor of segregation, ruling that facilities that separated the races didn’t violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

Faced with the choice of spending 20 days in jail or paying a $25 fine, on Jan. 11, 1897, Plessy [pled](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Together/zqcPEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=jail) guilty and paid the fine.

The effect of the decision was long-lasting, providing a legal basis for segregation laws nationwide throughout the first half of the 20th century. As Imani Perry, Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, [explained to TIME in 2020](https://time.com/5858169/americas-worst-moments/), “Since 1876, the courts and Congress had steadily eroded the Reconstruction Amendments’ promises to African-Americans: suffrage, equal protection of the law and due process before the law. But the _Plessy_ opinion and its embrace of ‘separate but equal’ let African Americans know once and for all that, despite the Constitution’s guarantees, their fundamental rights would not be protected.”


The “separate but equal” precedent wouldn’t be overturned until 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in _Brown v. Board of Education_ that racially segregated public schools violated the equal protection clause, paving the way for other successful challenges to segregation and galvanizing a new wave of the civil rights movement.

## **Descended from history**

Among those growing up in the segregated society that _Plessy v. Ferguson_ facilitated were two now 64-year-old descendants of figures closely tied to the case: Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson, the great-great granddaughter of the New Orleans district court judge in the case. (Homer Plessy died on Mar. 1, 1925, at the age of 62.)

![Phoebe Ferguson, Keith Plessy](https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0c19e4a50472b717/698a213986f68eeb566f0c50/plessy-ferguson-descendants.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp)

Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson, descendants of the principals in the Plessy v. Ferguson court case, pose for a photograph in front of a historical marker in New Orleans on June 7, 2011. Bill Haber—AP


Both remember childhoods in segregated New Orleans. Ferguson was not able to sit next to her Black babysitter in a movie theater, while Plessy couldn’t enter certain restaurants through their front doors. 

The Jim Crow era of segregation following _Plessy v. Ferguson_ left “a deep and painful legacy that we are still dealing with today,” as Orleans Parish District Attorney Williams puts it, “and we all can see it in social inequities, whether it’s housing insecurity, food insecurity, poverty, violence in certain communities, how the criminal legal system is used in certain neighborhoods based upon the wealth or complexion of those people.”

Plessy and Ferguson only found out about their connections to the Supreme Court case when they were in their 30s and 40s, respectively—their families had never talked about these ancestors growing up. They were introduced to each other in 2004 by Keith Weldon Medley, author of _We as Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson_.


“I reached my hand out to shake \[Ferguson’s\] hand and she started apologizing for slavery, discrimination, ‘separate but equal,’” Keith Plessy recalls. “And I said, we weren’t born then. We’re not responsible for this. It’s no longer _Plessy v. Ferguson_, it’s Plessy _and_ Ferguson.”

In 2009, they together founded the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation, a civil rights education nonprofit aiming to help schools teach the history of the case and its dark legacy. And thanks in part to Keith Plessy’s efforts, Louisiana has been celebrating the day of Homer Plessy’s arrest as Homer Plessy Day since 2005; a strip of the street where he was arrested was renamed Homer Plessy Way in 2018\. 

![Homer Plessy Freedom Sign Painted On School Fence](https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9f766a8e76ca6380/698a20afdb29871b012674b8/homer-plessy-mural-new-orleans.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp)

Sign with a train with Homer Plessy Freedom printed on it on February 26, 2020, at Homer Plessy Community School in New Orleans, Louisiana. Barry Lewis/InPictures—Getty Images


This past fall, local civil rights attorney Mary Howell was brainstorming ideas for future foundation programming with Phoebe Ferguson, and decided to find some way to mark the 125th anniversary of Homer Plessy’s prosecution. Howell made the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office aware of the anniversary, and it was then that a staffer found the law that allowed them to pursue the posthumous pardon. The state pardons board approved their application unanimously on Nov. 12\. 

The approval was “a long time coming,” says Keith Plessy. 

“I am so happy that there was something that we could do to make a different ending to this story,” Phoebe Ferguson adds, noting that her tie to Judge Ferguson has always felt like a “burden.”

“I can’t say that it lifts the burden of his name being attached to a conviction that had such horrific results for so long,” she says. “I can’t escape the knowledge I have about the harms done in _Plessy v. Ferguson._ That in and of itself will always feel like a burden to some degree. But in some ways, it’s a good burden in that I can use my position to help others with a deeper understanding of the role of white Americans in white supremacy and lynchings and voter suppression.”


## Transcript

[00:00] If we go back to February 2020; How did  you first learn what had happened to Ahmaud?
[00:13] Um
[00:15] Oh is this a difficult question?
[00:20] Is it a difficult question? I mean I can imagine that it is but...
[00:29] Um
[00:32] Yeah. Okay.
[00:36] The death of Ahmaud Arbery last year  sparked protests across the United States
[00:43] Arbery 's family says he was out for a jog  February 23rd. But sixty-four-year-old Gregory
[00:48] McMichaels and his son, Travis, told police Arbery   was a burglar and chased him. Arbery died after
[00:55] being shot during that encounter. Ahmaud's former  football coach and other community members
[01:00] believe that social justice for Ahmaud, George Floyd,  Brianna Taylor, and others begins with lawmakers
[01:14] Have y'all heard about the Confederate monument  downtown? No? Not the history teacher? Coach,
[01:22] Coach can you give them a quick few seconds on  this monument downtown which is a problem?
[01:27] Our city you know that's already hurting you  know we're trying to come together so we want
[01:31] to get rid of all of those like symbols of like  division that i said you see what i'm saying? So
[01:38] your kids and you know your grandkids don't have  to look at it when they go downtown. We good?
[01:43] I got 112 football players I got to look in  the eye. And I got to hand over them a better
[01:48] community than I found. And so like even  when I see them or when I see my students
[01:54] I know I got to create better for them.  And I teach African-American Studies.
[01:57] And so I'm telling the stories of the past and I'm  thinking like I don't want you going through that
[02:14] Like so, like kids grow up in different type  of households so like this they just raised
[02:19] a certain way from like different from  us so they like they walk around with
[02:22] Confederate flags and they'll say it's a  different meaning than what we think it is.
[02:29] So the Sons of the Confederate Veterans  came down and wrapped it up because
[02:38] of the attention that has been drawn nationally  so they came down and and bubble wrapped it
[03:03] Like, in school, you got different like  you got different people opinions -
[03:07] and like you got so much animosity going on  now you might might have a big fight breakout
[03:11] you don't want that on the school name. So I see why they don't want to talk about it in school.
[03:17] Yeah yeah I'll go ahead and start. I'll  just hit some of the houses that I know
[03:21] uh myself. Did y'all talk to him? "Hey!  How's it going?" "All right now." "You good?" "Everybody
[03:30] good how you been?" "All right." Good, you uh you  plan on voting? Yeah. Okay! Did you watch the video?
[03:38] Oh yes ma'am, I watched the video last  year. Cuz they had - when it came out
[03:42] it was all over the place. So they'll just  share it sharing and sharing and sharing it so
[03:49] there's like no way you can hide it  from nobody. The whole world seen it now.
[03:57] Millions have seen the disturbing  video. Twenty-five-year-old Ahmaud Arbery
[04:01] Shot and killed as he's jogging in rural Georgia.
[04:06] Remember when you watched the video? I never watched
[04:09] it. I haven't seen it. I've heard about it,  but no I have not seen the video. Really, why?
[04:21] Um I really don't want to see it.
[04:25] You know, it was a terrible  situation and i just didn't want to see it.
[04:34] Do you see it as a like a racial incident?
[04:42] What I knew about Greg and his  son I don't, I can't see that.
[04:45] You know they never indicated  anything to me where they were
[04:51] or they were like that at all. You know they  just never did. I was very surprised when I saw
[04:58] them being the ones out here because I  wouldn't have thought that. You know, like I said,
[05:04] I was very surprised it happened here. After all  these people are all really nice that I've met.
[05:12] So one of the things that we heard resounding  across the community when the video came
[05:16] out was "How did this happen here?" You know, "We're unified," You know, "We don't have those issues here,"
[05:24] and I think you have to talk about Glenn County  in the context of Brunswick. Brunswick is the
[05:28] largest city in the county it's also the darkest  city, and when I say darkest I mean 60 percent black. It's
[05:34] also the city that has the highest poverty rate.  One of the highest poverty rates in the nation.
[05:38] Um and then you sit within this county  that has this opulence surrounding
[05:43] it, right? Saint Simons Island, Jayco Island; you  move to the counties 30 percent black at that point.
[05:49] So you really have a tale of two cities  that are separated by a bridge literally.
[05:56] You have a high rate of poverty -  disproportionate for black folk.
[06:00] You have low rates of home ownership - disproportionate for black folks.
[06:04] A large amount of folks on probation and  parole - primarily black folk. You have people
[06:10] in political office that run unopposed and only  600 people voted out of 8,000 registered voters. So
[06:18] if one would consider that unified then that means  that that's because everyone else has been silent.
[06:23] Just being you know a history teacher and  you know I teach African-American Studies.
[06:30] These tragedies happen so much. They  happen so much in our country, that
[06:39] I don't know maybe this is  not even a bookmark in history.
[06:43] And that is and that would be one of the most  tragic things in the world that something you
[06:49] know this tragedy happened and we don't learn from  it, we don't grow from it, we don't change from it.
[07:00] In African tradition there was something called,  or someone called, the griot. And the griot was
[07:06] responsible for telling the narrative of  the history of the family or the tribe.
[07:11] That person had to remember all of this,  right? We don't have a griot in the United
[07:16] States of America who can tell the accurate  story, right? And people like the McMichaels
[07:23] can choose to live their lives and never  hear the story. The full story. And the result
[07:30] is the death of an innocent black boy. A young  man, a young black man. Who died for no reason.
[07:39] I'll say at the outset: everybody deserves to  be able to run anywhere without being fearful
[07:45] that they're going to be gunned down. But when it  was Ahmaud Arbery that was gunned down and I knew
[07:56] who he was - it outraged me. Because he is the  descendant of a prince. He is the akin
[08:07] to royalty and he is the closest thing  we have to royalty here, his family.
[08:13] He came, you know he was the descendant of Bilali  Muhammad, who's been here since the 1790s. He was a
[08:23] royalty among the slaves, partly because he could  read, he could write, he brought the Arabic language
[08:30] you know, onto American shores. He was a brilliant  agronomist, you know? And he brought the
[08:39] materials and the tricks of the trade from west  Africa and they worked on the Georgia coast. And I
[08:46] think he was just highly regarded among his people.  A man who stood above all the others. People are
[08:53] always talking about the founding fathers of this  country, right? The founding builders of this place
[09:02] were Ahmaud's family. His family is tied to  Brunswick, Georgia itself. Brunswick is the
[09:07] second-largest Gullah Geechee city in all of  Georgia. And so these African Gullah Geechee people
[09:13] they play a role with regards to laying out  the streets and the squares in the place we
[09:16] know as Brunswick, Georgia. A planned city, much  like Savannah. So that tells you that these
[09:21] people had skills, they had skill sets, not just  regulated to just them working on a plantation
[09:27] but people who were still keeping Africa  alive. People were brought here - forced here
[09:37] immorally. But they were chosen particularly  because of their brains and their knowledge
[09:45] of rice culture and indigo culture - something  that European people had no real knowledge of.
[09:52] And they dug the canals, and built this place.
[09:59] Now I, you know, I will tell you the  McMichaels and Roddy Bryant's families go way
[10:05] way back in Georgia history. As you saw, some of my students research showed that you know
[10:11] the McMichael's ancestors fought for  the Confederacy. Some owned slaves,
[10:19] and they go back a long ways. And so they may  feel they have a right to be there. Well so did
[10:25] Ahmaud Arbery. So we have a collision of two worlds,  of two historic worlds and it's really important
[10:32] if you get the word historic in there because  uh neither of those entities that met each other
[10:40] met in a vacuum of the here and the now. They  both brought with them their respective histories.
[10:49] And unfortunately, in the United States  of America, the more powerful history
[10:54] is the one that came on the  backs of the McMichaels.
[11:02] I realize history is gonna - has seized us here.  I realize that. History gonna be here and
[11:08] reading history books 10 years from  now, it will be about this place.
[11:12] Things that happen, it always depends on what  you do with it once it happens to you.
[11:17] You know, are you going to lay down and just die or  you're going to get up and do something about it?
[11:23] I think people will look back and say that  this sparked and created a change.
[11:29] Where America looked at a very real problem and  prompted change and so they got rid of the Citizen
[11:37] Arrest Law, they got rid of Stand Your Ground  laws around the country - It is what sparked
[11:42] a change and that's what I hope that it does, I  hope that it sparks a change around the country
[11:47] and when they look at Brunswick they can say that,  look you know if Brunswick can unite and come
[11:51] together; this small town where people don't have a  lot in common depending on what street you live on,
[11:56] if they can come together and create a change  our country can come together and create a change.

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