
On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy bought a first-class ticket for Covington on the East Louisiana Railway, and found himself a seat. That night, he found himself in jail.
Plessy, seven-eighths Caucasian by the standards of the day, had boarded a Whites-only coach. The keen-eyed conductor, empowered by an 1890 state law, asked Plessy to move to a Colored coach on the same train. When Plessy refused, the New Orleans police were called in to haul him away.
Violating the law carried a $25 fine or twenty days in jail.
The case we know as Plessy v. Ferguson reached the Supreme Court in 1896. Justice Henry Billings Brown, writing for the 7-1 majority, argued that the still-fresh 13th and 14th Amendments — one abolishing slavery, the other guaranteeing all citizens “the equal protection of the laws” — had no bearing on the matter at hand:
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