Plessy AND Ferguson

It's interesting how the descendants of historical figures carry the load of their ancestors generations later.

From the Washington Post...

They represent the opposing principals in one of the Supreme Court’s landmark decisions, Plessy v. Ferguson , which upheld the constitutionality of Jim Crow laws mandating segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. It stood from 1896 until the court’s historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954.

The descendent of the man who tested Louisiana’s law requiring separate railroad cars for whites and blacks and the great-great-granddaughter of the judge who upheld it met in 2004.

“The first thing I said to her,” recalled Plessy, “was, ‘Hey, it’s no longer Plessy versus Ferguson. It’s Plessy and Ferguson.’ ” Her first reaction was to apologize. “I don’t know why,” she said in an interview. “It’s just that I felt the burden of it, this great injustice.” Plessy’s response? “I said, ‘You weren’t alive during that time. I wasn’t either. It’s time for us to change that whole image.’ ”

So the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation was born.