Homer Plessy’s pardon underscores the importance of Critical Race Theory
10th January 2022 · 0 Comments
On Wednesday, January 5, 2022, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards signed Louisiana’s first posthumous pardoned Homer A. Plessy, who was convicted of violating Louisiana’s Separate Car Act of 1890. The Jim Crow law codified racial segregation by maintaining separate train cars for whites and Blacks.
Gov. Edwards was joined by descendants of Homer A. Plessy, Justice John Harlan, and Judge John Ferguson, as well as by Southern University Professor of Law Angela Bell, Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams, civil rights leaders, and state and local elected officials at the corner of Royal and Press Streets, the former site of the Press Street Railyard when Plessy was arrested for sitting in a whites-only train car.
Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams filed the application for the full gubernatorial pardon of Plessy.
“The first six decades of the 20th century should have been filled with infinitely more promise and progress in race relations, and they would have been had slavery and segregation given way to equality and freedom as a plain reading of the 13th and 14th Amendments required,” said Gov. Edwards. “Instead, the 1896 Plessy decision ordained segregation for the explicit purpose of declaring and perpetuating white supremacy, as immoral and factually erroneous as that was – and is. The fictitious notion of “separate but equal” remained with us until the United States Supreme Court revisited the issue in 1954 in the context of public education and implicitly overruled Plessy. Mr. Plessy’s conviction should never have happened. But, there is no expiration on justice. No matter is ever settled until it is settled right. We still have a long way to go when it comes to equality and justice, but this pardon is certainly a step in the right direction.”
Plessy’s pardon comes 130 years after his arrest. A shoemaker by trade, Plessy agreed to be the subject of the civil rights test case set up by the Comité des Citoyens (Citizen’s Committee), a group of Creoles and freedmen whose aim was to overturn segregation laws that were being enacted across the South.
Governor Edwards’ pardon of Plessy is not only historical, but it points to the need to educate everyone about how Black Americans are treated in the courts. Plessy’s pardon negates complaints by white parents that teaching “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) might make their children feel bad or ashamed about being white. White parents and legislators are using CRT, which is taught in law schools, to ban or burn books about the black experience.
When CRT opponents suggested banning Ruby Bridges’ children’s book, which tells the story of her experiences in integrating a New Orleans public school in 1960, they exposed their true intentions. In banning and burning books and protesting against CRT at school board meetings, white parents want to eliminate any events in American history, including Black people. They don’t want their children to learn about slavery, lynching, racial discrimination, sundown towns, etc.
Homer A. Plessy’s pardon is critically important today because it reminds us that there is still an intense need to eradicate segregation and racial discrimination. After the Brown v. Board of Education decision ended segregation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one would think that “justice would stream down like a mighty river,” as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. often said. But today, New Orleans’ public schools are still segregated, and racial discrimination persists.
Plessy’s pardon also reminds us that we must continue the fight for judicial reform. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court majority chose states rights over the constitutional rights of Black people. The same thing is happening today in the U.S. Supreme Court and in state and federal courts.
Racially discriminatory laws in states’ constitutions are why CRT should be taught and acted upon. Judicial reform is another reason to take the lessons learned from CRT and demand fairness in the courts.
The U.S. Supreme Court needs to be reformed.
In 2019, the Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering was a political question, not one the federal court could weigh in on. The ruling effectively left the issue up to Congress and the states.
Before the ink was dry on the opinion, Republican majorities in most state legislatures across the U.S. drew district lines to benefit their party. As a result, Republican-dominated statehouses in 18 states passed at least 30 voter suppression laws to disenfranchise voters of color.
Additionally, although the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged in 2018 that Louisiana’s courts’ use of non-unanimous juries to convict people was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court refused to make the ruling retroactive, leaving thousands convicted by non-unanimous juries languishing in state prisons.
Moreover, the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to suspend Texas’ unconstitutional anti-abortion law. In 2020 the Fifth Circuit reversed a trial court’s decision on a case challenging how judges are elected in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, ruling against Black residents who sought an opportunity to elect a judge of their choice to the trial court bench.
Just as in Plessy’s case, today, there are white judges determined to promote states’ rights, white supremacy, and rule in favor of state-sanctioned acts of racial and gender discrimination at every turn.
Plessy reminds us that the need for judicial reform and more diversity on court benches statewide is still necessary. More than a century passed before Black New Orleanians elected the first black judge to the Louisiana State Supreme Court. Even today, only one is Black of the seven sitting justices on the state’s highest court.
Plessy also reminds us of the importance of all Americans learning all aspects of American history, lest we repeat past errors.
This article originally published in the January 10, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
