The decision to pardon Homer Plessy is a symbolic gesture to acknowledge a wrong that took place so long ago.
as vice president of the Justice, Protective, Educational and Social Club, which set out to reform New Orleans' public education system. In 1890, Plessy amplified his political activism in response to Louisiana’s Separate Car Act of 1890, which segregated public facilities. According to the new law, “all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this State, shall provide equal but separate accommodation for the white and colored race.
Plessy occupied a seat in the “whites only” car and when he refused an order to move to the “colored only” section, he was removed, arrested, charged and later convicted. Justice Henry Billings Brown, writing for the majority, placed the authority to segregate a population within the power of a state legislature. Hethat the 14th Amendment “could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social … equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.”
He added: “We would not have had the system of segregation, separate water fountains, buses, schools, public facilities. We would not have had the levels of disparity in health and criminal justice and economic life that we experienced because that ruling sanctioned unequal.”
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