|
|
"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
|
Plessy and Ferguson unveil plaque today marking their ancestors' actions
|
|---|
| Parent(s) |
Container
|
| Contributor | Brandonius Maximus |
| Last Edited | Brandonius Maximus Feb 12, 2009 10:20am |
| Logged |
0
|
| Category | Event |
| Media | Newspaper - New Orleans Times-Picayune |
| News Date | Thursday, February 12, 2009 04:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Today, Plessy versus Ferguson becomes Plessy and Ferguson, when descendants of opposing parties in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court segregation case stand together to unveil a plaque at the former site of the Press Street Railroad Yards.
Standing behind Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson will be a large group of students, scholars, officials and activists who worked for years to honor the site where in 1892, Treme shoemaker Homer Plessy, a light-skinned black man, was arrested for sitting in a railway car reserved for white people.
People often think that his ancestor held some responsibility for the legalized segregation known as "separate but equal, " said Keith Plessy, 52, a longtime New Orleans hotel bellman whose great-grandfather was Homer Plessy's first cousin. In actuality, Homer Plessy boarded that train as part of a carefully orchestrated effort to create a civil-rights test case, to fight the proliferation of segregationist laws in the South. |
| Share |
|
|
2¢
|
|
| Article | Read Full Article |
|
| Date |
Category |
Headline |
Article |
Contributor |
|
|
