The case began in 1892, when Homer Plessy, a Black man in New Orleans, sat in a whites-only train car to challenge Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890. A group of Black Creole activists organized the test case. Plessy was arrested and convicted, and he appealed on the grounds that the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Supreme Court ruled 7 to 1 against him. The majority said segregation did not imply that Black people were inferior. Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented, writing that the Constitution is "color-blind" and predicting that the decision would prove as harmful as Dred Scott.
In practice, facilities for Black Americans were almost never equal. Plessy gave legal cover to segregated schools, transit, hospitals and public spaces across the South for nearly 60 years. Louisiana's governor pardoned Homer Plessy in 2022.