Aristide Mary’s politics embodied Creole activism in New Orleans. A native of the city, Mary’s mixed race ancestry shaped his experiences and political ideas. Educated in Paris, Mary became a lawyer but his family’s inheritance helped propel him into a wealthy businessman. The ideas he learned in France about law and society influenced Mary’s political devotion to racial equality and integration, making him a member of the radical Republican Party following the Civil War. In particular, Mary advocated for integration and funded lawsuits to protest racial segregation. This influence was felt throughout New Orleans as he held positions on the Straight University Board of Trustees and on the Executive Committee, and facilitated multiple movements to fight for civil rights. In 1873, Mary helped bring white and Black people in Louisiana together under the umbrella of unity to fight for equality and justice. During this period of racial violence and the denial of constitutional rights for Black Americans, Mary co-founded the biracial Unification Movement and rallied 1,800 Black and white men to sign their names to a document calling for racial equality. Exposition Hall housed the meetings, which sat on the 700 block of St. Charles Avenue. Within the Unification Movement, Mary served on the Committee of One Hundred and Committee of Resolutions to formulate the movement’s principles and resolutions calling for political justice, racial equality, and an end to discrimination. Composed of other highly respected New Orleans businessmen, including Paul Bonseigneur, Laurente Auguste, Eugene Luscy, and C. C. Antoine, these committees connected Creoles of color and gave them a platform for their activism. Although the Unification Movement was short-lived, Mary continued to exert his influence and finances toward racial harmony in New Orleans. A few years later in 1877, Mary led a large delegation of his followers to protest the reinstatement of segregated schools in New Orleans. They believed that segregated schools would lead to segregated public spaces and infringe on public rights to equality. Not giving up the fight, Mary helped establish the Crescent City Arthur Republican Central Club where he was an honorary member. These types of clubs were formed in every ward throughout New Orleans and Louisiana and were based on affirming the principles of republicanism within the Republican Party. In 1891, Mary again used his local influence and connections to help other Creole leaders, such as Rodolphe Desdunes and Louis Martinet, form the Comité des Citoyens (Citizen's Commitee). This organization of Black Creole activists planned to bring a legal challenge to segregation laws. Utilizing his finances, in addition to his experiences as a radical Republican and a leader of protests against school segregation, Mary helped Desdunes and Martinet devise a plan for Homer Plessy to board a train at the Press Street Station in New Orleans and contest the 1890 Separate Car Act. Tragedy struck the Mary family as well as the Comité when Mary died by suicide in 1893. The Creole community had lost a prominent figure who radically fought for civil rights in the post-Civil War era. Additionally, the founding father of the Comité had left them before their legal protest against segregation was resolved in court. Even though Mary did not live to see the Plessy v. Ferguson case through, his impact on civil rights survived.
]]>In the immediate aftermath of Plessy v. Ferguson, the case itself received relatively little attention. Homer Plessy paid the twenty-five dollar fine for violating the Separate Car Act and went to work as a laborer. Before the ruling, segregation was less formal in the public sphere, primarily felt in education. However, Plessy soon cemented segregation throughout United States society. This new legal regime, dubbed “Jim Crow,” entrenched racial segregation in public spaces such as transportation services, hotels, water fountains, parks, and restrooms, justified under the “separate but equal” doctrine of the case. Following Plessy, racial discrimination played out in other facets of society in Louisiana as well. For example, the 1898 Louisiana Constitution disenfranchised thousands of Black voters through poll taxes and literacy tests. The increase in lynchings also continued to terrorize African Americans during the 1890s and into the twentieth century. Racial tensions erupted in New Orleans during the Robert Charles Race Massacre of 1900, in which white New Orleanians attacked Black citizens at random in their manhunt for Charles, a Black man accused of shooting local white police officers. Therefore, the U.S. entered a new century dedicated to maintaining white supremacy through violence, disenfranchisement, and segregation. By the election of 1912, formal legal segregation had become law in the South. President Woodrow Wilson solidified this legal trend nationally and segregated the federal government via executive order. However, new resistance movements in the spirit of protest emerged in response. The Niagara Movement which later merged into the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), continued the legacy of the Comité by fighting for Black civil rights through legal channels. In 1954, Thurgood Marshall, the head of the NAACP’S Legal Defense Fund, successfully defeated the doctrine of separate but equal in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education. The Supreme Court ruled the segregation of public schools as unconstitutional, reversing the judicial decision in Plessy and paving the way to challenge formal legal segregation and discrimination in other public facilities. The legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson continues to hold significance in the twenty-first century. In September of 2004, two descendants of John Ferguson and Homer Plessy met at the book signing hosted at the Preservation Resource Center for We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson, a detailed history of the people and events that led up to the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision. The author, Keith Weldon Medley, introduced Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson, who soon formed a friendship and partnership around their shared history. Five years later on February 12, 2009, Keith and Phoebe joined the Crescent City Peace Alliance and NOCCA to unveil the Plessy v. Ferguson historical marker on the site of Plessy’s arrest in 1892 at the corner of Press and Royal Streets. On July 9, 2009, at Cafe Reconcile on Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., Keith and Phoebe formally incorporated the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation dedicated to educating students and the public about the complex history, surprising details, and civil rights activism of the case. In 2018, Press Street was renamed Homer Plessy Way in his honor. The Homer A. Plessy Community School, a K-8 school for New Orleans children, is also named for the historic plaintiff. Homer Plessy Day falls on June 7, the date of his arrest, and similarly memorializes Plessy and the fight for civil rights in New Orleans. Most recently on January 5th, 2022, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards issued a pardon for Homer Plessy for violating the 1890 Separate Car Act. Descendants who signed the pardon application, including Keith and Phoebe, bore witness to Governor Edwards issuing the posthumous pardon in an important step toward restorative justice for Plessy and other victims of racially discriminatory laws. The Plessy and Ferguson Foundation’s efforts to preserve, make known, and memorialize the history of Plessy v. Ferguson help us reconcile with the past and fuels our commitment to justice and equity in New Orleans and nationwide.
]]>The Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case is well-known in United States history. As the Supreme Court case that established the doctrine of “separate but equal,” it ushered in the Jim Crow era of legal racial segregation and discrimination. By the mid-twentieth century, civil rights activists began to dismantle Jim Crow rule. Most notably, Brown v. Board of Education (1954) overturned Plessy and ruled “separate but equal” unconstitutional, opening the doors for activists to challenge race-based discrimination in the civil rights movement. Fewer understand that Plessy v. Ferguson is a New Orleans story. The radical crusaders who fought for racial justice in the nineteenth century are often left out of America’s civil rights narrative or, when included, are misunderstood. For example, an image of P.B.S. Pinchback, the first Black governor, is often confused for Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in the landmark case. Artist Ian Wilkerson attempts to clear the confusion in a mural that features both Pinchback and a rendering of Plessy. From the Plessy v. Ferguson historical marker at 700 Homer Plessy Way, the mural is a short walk across the railroad tracks on Royal Street, directly across from Studio Be. The Plessy case came after a period of many political and social gains for Black Americans following the Civil War. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, and the 14th and 15th Amendments promised formerly enslaved people equal rights and the right to vote. As a result, Black men became politicians, primarily in the Republican party, and helped shape the laws of a country re-establishing itself during the period known as Reconstruction. Particularly in Louisiana, men of color elected to the state legislature wrote the most radical state constitution in 1868, protecting equal rights for all regardless of race. As such, people of color in Louisiana could vote and utilize integrated public facilities. In New Orleans, Black Creoles had enjoyed relative privilege for generations. Their multi-ethnic backgrounds included European, African, Caribbean, and Native American descent, and placed them in a unique racial category. Many were never enslaved and some could pass as white, opening opportunities for acquiring wealth and certain privileges. Those with French ancestry held close ties with the culture, and many spoke the language, spent time in France, and were educated in French schools. Therefore, French principles of equality and democracy shaped Black Creoles' ideas that public rights should protect human dignity, which included integration. However, the rights that Black Americans and Creoles fought for and sought to maintain soon came under attack. At this period in history, the Democratic Party was devoted to white supremacy. Democrats and white supremacists used violence to intimidate African Americans from exercising their political voice in bloody events such as the Mechanic’s Institute Massacre, the Colfax Massacre, and the Battle of Liberty Place. Racial terror through lynchings steadily increased during Reconstruction, peaking in the 1890s. In addition, a slew of Supreme Court decisions handed down in the 1870s and 1880s limited the power of the federal government to protect Black citizenship rights. By 1877, Reconstruction ended throughout the South, and federal troops left, stripping Black Americans of yet another layer of federal protection. Despite such setbacks, the Creoles of color in New Orleans who had exercised freedoms and privileges for decades did not tolerate these infringements on their rights, particularly after the passage of the Separate Car Act (SCA). Passed by the Louisiana state legislature in 1890, the SCA called for separate cars for white and Black passengers traveling by railroad in order “to promote the comfort of passengers on railway trains.” This indignity drove Black Creoles to form the Comité des Citoyens (Citizen’s Committee) and mount a legal challenge to racially discriminatory laws. Through Plessy v. Ferguson, they protested racial discrimination in the American legal landscape before the highest court of the land--the Supreme Court of the United States. Civil rights activism has deep roots in New Orleans. The Plessy v. Ferguson tour that follows highlights the stories of people and places who were instrumental in challenging the 1890 Louisiana Separate Car Act.
]]>Caesar Carpentier Antoine was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on September 10, 1836, to a prominent Creole family. His family were part of an established network of Creoles of color in Louisiana that fought for public rights and equality. His father, Pedro Antoine, was a veteran of the Battle of New Orleans and his mother, Mary Gasso, was a native of the West Indies. His paternal grandmother, an enslaved woman of color, bought her freedom and made a living as a midwife. Antoine’s family history helps explain why he and his brother joined the 1st Louisiana Native Guards, a state militia unit formed of free men of color for the Confederate Army. As a Creole, Antoine enjoyed relative privilege and freedom in New Orleans, living similarly to his white counterparts, thus aligning some of his interests with those of white Southerners. However, when the Union Army occupied New Orleans early in the Civil War, Antoine joined these forces and recruited Black soldiers. He was forced to relinquish his status as an officer but continued to serve through the Union until the end of the war as a common soldier. After the Civil War, Antoine returned to his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana and became involved in business and politics. In 1868, citizens of Caddo Parish elected Antoine to the state senate where he served on the biracial constitutional committee that crafted the Louisiana Constitution of 1868, the most radical document extending civil rights protections to formerly enslaved people and other people of color in the state. By 1872, Antoine ascended to his highest political distinction as lieutenant governor of Louisiana. He remained in this position until Democrats, the White League, and other white supremacists staged a coup to overthrow the election of 1876 and placed a Democratic governor in power. As a result, former Confederates and their allies began to reestablish white supremacist rule in the state government. The coup signified white Southerners’ response to Black political and social gains during Reconstruction, a period in which Black citizens exercised political influence and implemented civil rights laws. One year later, federal troops left their stations in 1877 and marked the end of Reconstruction, leaving Black Southerners without federal protections in the face of growing white supremacist rule. Nonetheless, Antoine continued to be an influential activist in New Orleans, where he maintained a residence in the 300 block of South Claiborne Avenue, and worked alongside people of color and progressive white men and women to advocate for equal rights. He held leadership roles in the biracial Unification Movement alongside Aristide Mary and the American Equal Rights Association. In 1891, eighteen Creole of color members of these two groups formed the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens’ Committee) to fight against racial discrimination in courts, including Louis Martinet and Rodolphe Desdunes. Antoine’s experiences defending equal justice during Reconstruction inspired the group to elect him as the Comité’s Vice President. As a veteran voice, his influence was crucial to the organization’s protest of the Separate Car Act and the Plessy v. Ferguson case that eventually reached the Supreme Court.
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