It is important to consider the context for Plessy V. Ferguson. During Reconstruction, African-Americans gained many political rights. For the first time in Louisiana, they could vote. Many were elected to office and served in state government. These gains were violently opposed by white southerners. They saw to the end of Reconstruction, and began reversing all of the gains that African-Americans had made. The new "Jim Crow" laws were designed to remove African-Americans from power and re-subjugate them.
Following the civil war, the Union maintained occupying forces in the southern states as it sought to implement a number of reforms to state and local governments. Throughout the south, whites were opposed to the changes under Reconstruction. New Orleans, however, stood out for its open hostility.
In the gubernatorial election of 1872, both John McEnery, a Democrat, and William Pitt Kellogg, the Republican Party nominee, claimed victory. Amid charges of voter suppression, the federal government sided with Kellogg. In 1874 McEnery and his allies formed their own unofficial government in New Orleans, then the state capitol, supported by 5,000 armed members of the White League. They were opposed by 3,500 police and state militia, who suffered around 100 causalities in a battle outside the Customs House on Canal Street. Governor Kellogg asked President Grant for federal troops, which he sent in to restore order.
Reconstruction ended in 1877. In 1891, the city erected a monument in honor of the White League and their insurrection at the site of the battle by the Customs House.
The Democratic legislature sought to roll back the advances that African-Americans had made during reconstruction by passing laws which restricted their freedoms and liberties. One of these was the 1890 "Separate Car Act," which mandated that whites and non-whites could not use the same railway cars. Non-white passengers had to sit in separate cars or face arrest.
Contrary to popular belief, so-called "Jim Crow" laws did not begin in the South. These laws even pre-dated the Civil War. The term was first used in Boston, Massachusetts in 1838. See Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation, by Steven Luxenberg (2019).
April 1865: Lee surrenders to Grant.
May 1865: Reconstruction begins.
December 1865: The 13th Amendment is ratified by the states.
April 1866: Congress passes a Civil Rights Act.
July 1868: The 14th Amendment is ratified by the states.
February 1870: The 15th Amendment is ratified by the states.
April 1873: The Supreme Court restricts the 13th and 14th Amendments in The Slaughter-House Cases.
September 1873: Insurrection in New Orleans known as the Battle of Liberty Place.
March 1875: Congress passes a Civil Rights Act.
1877: Reconstruction ends.
October 1883: The Supreme Court declares the 1875 Civil Rights laws unconstitutional in the Civil Rights Cases.
July 1890: The Louisiana State legislature passes Act 111, the separate car act.
Charles Dudley Warner, a writer and friend of Mark Twain, traveled to New Orleans in 1885 and saw that whites and African-Americans were interacting socially, and without any evident problems. "On “Louisiana Day” in the Exposition the colored citizens took their full share of the parade and the honors. Their societies marched with the others, and the races mingled on the grounds in unconscious equality of privileges." see Dudley's IMPRESSIONS OF THE SOUTH IN 1885.
But for a simple twist of fate, the case known for declaring “separate but equal” as the law of the land could have had the name Plessy v. Marr. This would have been a far more appropriate naming of opponents.
In 1863, when Union forces occupied New Orleans, Robert Hardin Marr refused to take the oath of allegiance. In May, he was expelled from the city with the registered enemies. After the war, he returned. In August of 1874, Marr was president of the Democratic and conservative state convention that met in Baton Rouge. In September of that year, he was the chairman of the committee that led the insurrection known as the "Battle of Liberty Place." In 1876 he was vice-president of the state convention that nominated Francis T. Nicholls for governor of Louisiana. After the election, Nicholls appointed Marr to the State Supreme Court, on which Marr served until 1880. Eight years later, when Governor Nichols began his second term in 1888, he appointed Marr to the Criminal District Court. On August 6, 1888, he was sworn in as Judge, Section A, Criminal District Court. By 1892, at the age of 72, Judge Marr was a perfect representative of the old order that was reasserting its dominance after the failure of Reconstruction. However, Homer Plessy never entered Marr’s courtroom.
On the morning of April 19, 1892, Judge Marr was seen down by the waterfront docks. He enjoyed walking along the levee and the Exposition grounds (today's Audubon Park). A witness saw him by the Walnut Street wharf. His body was never found, despite numerous searches of the area and the river by police, volunteers, and family.
On June 30, 1892 Mr. J.H. Ferguson was appointed by the governor and confirmed by the senate as Judge of the Criminal District Court in place of Judge Marr.
