Page "Homer Plessy" Paragraph 16

In 1892, the Citizens ' Committee asked Plessy to agree to violate Louisiana's Separate Car law that required the segregation of passenger trains by race.

On June 7, 1892, Plessy, then thirty years old and resembling in skin color and physical features a white male, bought a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railroad running between New Orleans and Covington, the seat of now suburban St. Tammany Parish.

He sat in the " whites-only " passenger car.

When the conductor came to collect his ticket, Plessy told him that he was 7 / 8 white and that he refused to sit in the " blacks-only " car.

Plessy was immediately arrested by Detective Chris C. Cain, put into the Orleans Parish jail, and released the next day on a $ 500 bond.