How dark was Plessy?
In the landmark case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court gave the ok to "separate but equal" rail cars, leading to decades of legal segregation of white folks and brown folks. As the story went, Homer Plessy was a 30 year old man who was 7/8 white and 1/8 black. He was arrested when he refused to leave the white car of a train. The case was decided in 1896.
We discussed Plessy in Con Law last week and at some point during the class the professor asked what we thought Plessy looked like. As many of my classmates also did, I figured Plessy looked straight-up white. Professor Con Law said we were wrong, and then pulled up this picture:
I was like, "oh snap! Plessy was a brotha!" Given that he was 7/8 white, I had not expected this at all. Like, damn, that one great-grandparent of his must have been dark.
Over the weekend I decided to look for more pictures of Plessy to see if I could get a better view. That grainy headshot was the only picture I could find on all the Plessy websites. But then I found this:
The above picture is clearly not from 1896. This fool's headshot is all over the internet marked as being the famous Homer Plessy, but it's not him! If this guy were really Plessy, he would have to be 80-something years old in this picture.
I emailed Professor Con Law about it, hoping he would show my picture in class today. But he didn't. All he said was, "Ms. Dominikimchee has questioned my picture of Plessy. I'm looking into it."
We discussed Plessy in Con Law last week and at some point during the class the professor asked what we thought Plessy looked like. As many of my classmates also did, I figured Plessy looked straight-up white. Professor Con Law said we were wrong, and then pulled up this picture:
I was like, "oh snap! Plessy was a brotha!" Given that he was 7/8 white, I had not expected this at all. Like, damn, that one great-grandparent of his must have been dark.
Over the weekend I decided to look for more pictures of Plessy to see if I could get a better view. That grainy headshot was the only picture I could find on all the Plessy websites. But then I found this:
The above picture is clearly not from 1896. This fool's headshot is all over the internet marked as being the famous Homer Plessy, but it's not him! If this guy were really Plessy, he would have to be 80-something years old in this picture.
I emailed Professor Con Law about it, hoping he would show my picture in class today. But he didn't. All he said was, "Ms. Dominikimchee has questioned my picture of Plessy. I'm looking into it."
posted by Dominikimchee at 1:45 PM
4 Comments:
clearly NOT plessy.
apparently, the fashion era in which the plessy case occurred was "la bella epoque" (see http://www.costumes.org/classes/fashiondress/TurnoftheCentury.htm). the clothing in this picture is way too informal to belong to this era: check white dude on the right's SHORT-SLEEVED, and CHECKERED shirt.
most tellingly, homeboy has SUNGLASSES on, which didn't even come about until the 1930s (see http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bleyeglass.htm).
i can't believe Prof. Con Law was actually wrong!
I found a picture of Plessy, and he does indeed look white. here is the link www.peacebuttons.info/.../images/HomerPlessy.jpg
this is a real picture of homer plessy. copy and paste
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4RNTN_enUS320&q=picture+of+homer+plessy
He dose not look like a brotha to me!.
Would the real Homer Plessy please stand up? Neither of the two pictures offered up by our posters are Plessy either. It seems that there is a habit of historians, professors, and textbook authors of misidentifying Homer. Common themes are that all the bogus photos show the fake Homers are they are all white or whitish and all southern...but there does not seem to be any verified public domain pictures of our good friend Plessy. Keyab posted a picture that is in fact Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (10 May 1837 - 21 December 1921), former governor of Louisiana). Don't watch me posted a link to a google page that just kinda shotgunned photos of semi-white guys, none of which are Plessy. I find it interesting that even post mortem, people are trying to misrepresent Plessy's racial identity.
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