on had become segregated in a number of southern states. The Plessy case grew out of a careful strategy to test the legality of a Louisiana law passed in 1890 that required railroads to maintain separate train cars for blacks and whites. In September 1891 a group of blacks in New Orleans, Louisiana, formed the Citizens Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law and raised $3000 to mount a formal challenge to segregation in Louisiana. Albion Tourgee, then the nation’s best-known white advocate of black legal rights, agreed to argue the case free of charge.In June 1892 Homer A. Plessy bought a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railroad and sat in the car designated for whites only. Plessy was of mixed African and European ancestry, and he looked white. Because the Citizens Committee wanted to challenge the segregation law in court, it alerted railroad officials that Plessy would be sitting in the whites only car, even though he was partly of African descent. Plessy was arrested and brought to court for arraignment before Judge John H. Ferguson of the U.S. District Court in Louisiana. Plessy then attempted to halt the trial by suing Ferguson on the grounds that the segregation law was unconstitutional.In 1896 Plessy’s challenge reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where Tourgee argued that segregation violated the 13th Amendment’s ban of involuntary slavery and the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the law. Tourgee asserted that these amendments, along with the Declaration of Independence, protected all Americans from discrimination. He told the court that the 14th Amendment gave constitutional power to the Declaration of Independence, which he described as “the all-embracing formula of personal rights on which our government is based.” Joining Tourgee in these arguments was Samuel F. Phillips, a former Solicitor General of the United States, who in 1883 had unsucce...
