Plessy is granted a pardon for riding whites-only train in 1892
NEW ORLEANS – Homer Plessy’s name was cleared Wednesday more than a century after his ejection from a whites-only train triggered the “separate but equal” Supreme Court ruling that institutionalized racism in America for decades.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards granted the pardon for what he called an “unjust criminal conviction” during a ceremony near the site of the arrest that was attended by relatives of Plessy and John Ferguson, the judge who handled the original case.
“The stroke of my pen on this pardon, while momentous, it doesn’t erase generations of pain and discrimination. It doesn’t eradicate all the wrongs brought by the Plessy court or fix all of our present challenges,” Edwards said. “But this pardon is a step in the right direction.”
The governor’s office said this was the first pardon under Louisiana’s 2006 Avery Alexander Act, which allows people to be pardoned who were convicted under laws that were intended to discriminate. The state pardon board in November unanimously recommended the pardon at the request of both Plessy and Ferguson’s families.
“I just feel gratitude for my ancestor who stood up and set an example for generations of civil rights activists who would follow him,” said Keith Plessy, a cousin of Homer Plessy, in an interview with USA TODAY Network.
Phoebe Ferguson, a descendant of the judge who ruled against Plessy, said the pardon “feels like a new dawn for civil rights.”
“This doesn’t erase the wrong,” Ferguson said. “We can’t undo the wrongs of the past, but we can learn from them and keep them from happening in the future.”
Contributing: Deborah Barfield Berry and Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY; The Associated Press.