We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson

by Keith Weldon Medley

Overview

"We, as freemen, still believe that we were right and our cause is sacred." --Statement of the Comitdes Citoyens, 1896

2004 FINALIST AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION'S SILVER GAVEL BOOK AWARD

"An excellent complement to the scholarly works of Charles A. Lofgren, Otto H. Olsen, and Brook Thomas, this remarkable read is recommended for public and academic library collections." --Library Journal

In June 1892, a thirty-year-old shoemaker named Homer Plessy bought a first-class railway ticket from his native New Orleans to Covington, north of Lake Pontchartrain. The two-hour trip had hardly begun when Plessy was arrested and removed from the train. Though Homer Plessy was born a free man of color and enjoyed relative equality while growing up in Reconstruction-era New Orleans, by 1890 he could no longer ride in the same carriage with white passengers. Plessy's act of civil disobedience was designed to test the constitutionality of the Separate Car Act, one of the many Jim Crow laws that threatened the freedoms gained by blacks after the Civil War. This largely forgotten case mandated separate-but-equal treatment and established segregation as the law of the land. It would be fifty-eight years before this ruling was reversed by Brown v. Board of Education.

Keith Weldon Medley brings to life the players in this landmark trial, from the crusading black columnist Rodolphe Desdunes and the other members of the Comitdes Citoyens to Albion W. Tourgee, the outspoken writer who represented Plessy, to John Ferguson, a reformist carpetbagger who nonetheless felt that he had to judge Plessy guilty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455613939
Publisher:	Pelican Publishing Company, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/21/2012
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Born in New Orleans, Keith Weldon Medley grew up in the Faubourg Marigny not far from where Homer Plessy lived. He attended St. Augustine High School and graduated from Southern University at New Orleans with a BA in sociology and psychology. A two-time recipient of publication initiative grants from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, Medley has published articles in American Legacy, Louisiana Cultural Vistas, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and other periodicals. We as Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson is expanded from an article he wrote for Smithsonian. Medley is the author of Black Life in Old New Orleans, also published by Pelican.

American Legacy, Louisiana Cultural Vistas, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and other periodicals. We as Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson is expanded from an article he wrote for Smithsonian. Medley is the author of Black Life in Old New Orleans, also published by Pelican.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	9
Chapter 1	A Negro Named Plessy	13
Chapter 2	John Howard Ferguson	37
Chapter 3	Albion W. Tourgee	53
Chapter 4	One Country, One People	67
Chapter 5	The Separate Car Act of 1890	89
Chapter 6	Who Will Bell the Cat?	111
Chapter 7	Are You a Colored Man?	139
Chapter 8	My Dear Martinet	169
Chapter 9	We as Freemen	185
Chapter 10	The Battle of Freedom	209
Appendix	Further Reading	225
	Notes	229
	Index	243