![]() ![]() ![]() Both cases argued that segregation laws violated the 14th Amendment’s right to equal protection. Ferguson ruling allowing racial segregation across American life stood as the law of the land until the Supreme Court unanimously overruled it in 1954, in Brown v. 1 Cemetery in New Orleans, on June 3, 2018. A marker on the burial site for Homer Plessy at St. Justice John Harlan was the only dissenting voice, writing that he believed the ruling “will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott Case” - an 1857 decision that said no Black person who had been enslaved or was descended from a slave could ever become a U.S. Historian Keith Weldon Medley recounts the rich history of African and African-American cultural influence on one of Americas most-beloved cities. Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote in the 7-1 decision: “Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences.” ![]() The purpose “is not to erase what happened 125 years ago but to acknowledge the wrong that was done,” Phoebe Ferguson, the great-great-granddaughter of the county judge who imposed Plessy’s punishment, said during the ceremony. John Bel Edwards held the pardon ceremony near the spot near where Plessy was arrested. ![]()
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