Governor pardons figure from history of civil rights movement

Gov. John Bel Edwards on Wednesday signed Louisiana’s first posthumous pardon of Mr. Homer A. Plessy, who was convicted of violating Louisiana’s Separate Car Act of 1890, the purpose of which was to ensure racial segregation as a means to promote white supremacy.
Edwards was joined by descendants of 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 a number of state and local elected officials.
“The first six decades of the 21st 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 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. It is with great joy that today I pardon Homer Plessy and settle this matter."