18921776 Club
Plessy boards a whites-only car and waits; the arrest goes exactly as planned
The Comité des Citoyens hired the detective themselves, staging the challenge to Louisiana's Separate Car Act at the Press Street Depot.
Four years into Louisiana's Separate Car Act, a small civil rights organization in New Orleans had already tried once to break it in court and failed on a technicality. On June 7, 1892, a shoemaker named Homer Plessy bought a first-class ticket at the Press Street Depot, sat down in a whites-only car on the East Louisiana Railroad bound for Covington, and waited to be arrested — which is exactly what happened, on schedule, by a private detective the Comité des Citoyens had hired themselves. The criminal case that followed traveled to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 7–1 against Plessy in 1896, enshrining "separate but equal" as constitutional doctrine for the next fifty-eight years…
