Good idea: Presidential Medal of Freedom for Homer Plessy, the apology long overdue

Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson

White House Petition:

Award Homer Plessy the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his significant role in the American Civil Rights Struggle.

Created by P.F. on April 15, 2016

On June 7, 1892, Plessy a mixed-race shoemaker was jailed for sitting in the “white” only car on the East Louisiana railroad in defiance of a local segregation ordinance. He later became the plaintiff in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court where, the Justices decided against him in the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896. The loss of the Supreme Court case in 1896 resulted in Plessy’s name being forever associated with the long and oppressive blight of Jim Crow laws and has obscured his contribution to the legal, social and moral movement to abolish those restrictive laws. In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education initiated a new era and the gradual dismantling of legalized American apartheid. Lets restore Homer A Plessy’s name with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.