why did the committee to test the separate car act choose homer plessy
Answers
Plessy was a Louisiana French Creole plaintiff in U.S. Supreme Court.
Ferguson was arrested, tried and convicted in New Orleans of a violation of Louisiana's racial segregation laws but he appealed through Louisiana state courts to Supreme Court and lost.
The resulting "separate but equal" decision against him had wide results for civil rights in the United States.
The planning legalized state-mandated segregation anywhere in the U.S. so long as the services provided for both blacks and whites were "equal".
Homer Plessy was born March 17, 1863. He was classified as an “Octoroon” by 19th-Century New Orleans standards, meaning he was one-eighth African in descent. Plessy had one black grandmother, a Haitian “free woman of color,” named Catherine Mathieu, who married and bore eight children with Homer’s French Caucasian grandfather
Homer Plessy was a member of the New Orleans Citizens Committee that organized challenges to segregation laws, deliberately violated Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890. The Separate Car Act required railroad companies traveling within the state of Louisiana to provide separate travel accommodations.
Homer Plessy was arrested on June 7, 1892, for sitting in a whites-only railroad car, in violation of restrictions set by Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890. The East Louisiana Railroad Company, which also wanted the Separate Car Act repealed
His efforts legalized state mandated segregation in all of US as long as the services were equally provided to the blacks as well as the whites.