Following the end of Reconstruction in 1877, Southern states made racial discrimination a matter of public policy by passing Jim Crow laws. Named after a 1830s minstrel-show character, these statutes maintained racial segregation and varied from state to state. In 1887 Florida became the first state to require whites and blacks to ride separately in railroad cars. Other states followed: Mississippi (1888), Texas (1889), Louisiana (1890), Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Tennessee (1891), and Kentucky (1892). The Louisiana law, "An Act to Promote the Comfort of Passengers," required equal but separate accommodations for people of each race.

Homer Plessy's Train Ride.

On 7 June 1892 Homer A. Plessy bought a ticket and boarded an East Louisiana Railway train bound from New Orleans to Covington, Louisiana. Plessy was an octoroon, a person of one-eighth black ancestry (one of his great-grandparents was African American). Someone told the conductor that Plessy was "colored," who then instructed...