Comité des Citoyens

The Comité des Citoyens ("Citizens' Committee") was a civil rights group made up of African Americans, whites, and Creoles. It is most well known for its involvement in Plessy v. Ferguson. The Citizens Committee was opposed to racial segregation and was responsible for multiple demonstrations in which African Americans rode on the "white" cars of trains.^[1]

In 1892, the Citizens' Committee asked Homer Plessy to violate Louisiana's Separate Car law that required the segregation of passenger trains by race. He sat in the "whites-only" passenger car. When the conductor came to collect his ticket, Plessy told him that he was 7/8 white and that he refused to sit in the "blacks-only" car. Plessy was immediately arrested by Detective Chris C. Cain, put into the Orleans Parish jail, and released the next day on a $500 bond.

Plessy v. Ferguson

Homer Plessy was only 1/8 African American.^[2] In 1892, the Citizens' Committee asked Homer Plessy to violate Louisiana's Separate Car law that required the segregation of passenger trains by race. He sat in the "whites-only" passenger car. When the conductor came to collect his ticket, Plessy told him that he was 7/8 white and that he refused to sit in the "blacks-only" car. Plessy was immediately arrested by Detective Chris C. Cain, put into the Orleans Parish jail, and released the next day on a $500 bond. Additionally, the committee hired a private detective with arrest powers to detain Plessy, to ensure that he would be charged for violating the Separate Car Act, as opposed to a vagrancy or some other offense.^[3]

The judge presiding over his case, John Howard Ferguson, ruled that Louisiana had the right to regulate railroad companies while they operated within state boundaries. Plessy was convicted and sentenced to pay a $25 fine. The Committee of Citizens took Plessy's appeal to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, where he again found an unreceptive ear, as the state Supreme Court upheld Judge Ferguson's ruling.^[3] the Committee appealed to the United States Supreme Court in 1896.^[4] In the seven-to-one decision handed down on May 18, 1896 (Justice David Josiah Brewer did not participate because of the recent death of his daughter), the Court rejected Plessy's arguments based on the Fourteenth Amendment, seeing no way in which the Louisiana statute violated it.^[3]

After the decision by the Supreme Court the Citizen's Committee stated, "We, as freemen, still believe that we were right and our cause is sacred."^[5]

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