Law of the land

American history, the U.S. Supreme Court, and things that change. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

I don’t know who else would be marking this, but next week will be the 128th anniversary of the day when a man named Homer Plessy bought a first class ticket for the East Louisiana Railway’s No. 8 train, traveling from New Orleans to Covington, Louisiana.

The South was segregated then, and Plessy took a seat in the “whites only” car. This was technically illegal for him. The law considered him “colored,” because only seven of his eight great-grandparents had been white.

A conductor asked his race, and Plessy replied truthfully. The conductor then ordered him to leave the “whites only” car, and Plessy refused. Then, according to a recently reconstructed account:

“Before he knew it, a private detective, with the help of several passengers, had dragged him off the train, put him in handcuffs and charged him with violating the 1890 Louisiana Separate Car Act, one of many new segregationist laws that were cropping up throughout the post-Reconstruction South.”

If you don’t know this story, he…