Homer Plessy has been officially pardoned by Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards after refusing to leave a whites-only railroad car in an effort to protest racial segregation 130 years ago, per the Associated Press. 

Plessy v. Ferguson was sparked by the conduct of Plessy, a Black man, which sealed “separate but equal” into law, securing whites-only places in public accommodations such as transportation, hotels and schools until the ruling was overturned in 1954. 

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Plessy was a member of a New Orleans-based organization working to overturn laws that set back post-Civil War equality gains. He pleaded guilty to his crimes and was fined $25 eight months after the verdict in his case, which is equivalent to a purchasing power of about $827.23 in 2022. 

BNC previously reported Plessy died in 1925 with the conviction lingering on his record, and the Louisiana Board of Pardons unanimously recommended a posthumous pardon in his honor in November of last year. 

The purpose “is not to erase what happened 125 years ago but to acknowledge the wrong that was done,” said Phoebe Ferguson, the great-great-granddaughter of the county judge who imposed Plessy’s punishment, per AP. 

Many historians have called the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling the “worst Supreme Court decision in history.” Simply put, it enforced racial segregation in the South and kept Black people assigned to a status of second-class citizenship.

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In his book We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson Keith Weldon Medley wrote Plessy’s one attribute “was being white enough to gain access to the train and black enough to be arrested for doing so.”