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A28 u.s. news
Diasabra 13 November 2021

Homer Plessy, key to ‘separate but equal,’ on road to pardon

the Jim Crow laws that dis- and he was imprisoned in the the street where he tried to
criminated against Black citi- parish jail, the court ruling board the train.
zens. states.
The move to pardon Plessy
Keith Plessy, 64, who is de- The Supreme Court ruled in comes amid a wider discus-
scended from a cousin of Plessy v. Ferguson that state sion about whether convic-
Homer Plessy’s, told the racial segregation laws didn’t tions or arrest records of
board that he remembers violate the Constitution as civil rights activists should be
meeting civil rights icon Rosa long as the facilities for the overturned or removed.
Parks, who refused in 1955 races were of equal quality.
to leave a whites-only seat on Claudette Colvin, a Black
a bus in Birmingham, Ala- Plessy pleaded guilty to vio- woman who was 15 when
bama, and kneeling to honor lating the Separate Car Act a she refused to move to the
her. year later and was fined $25. back of a bus months before
He died in 1925 with the Parks did so, has sued to wipe
“She said to me, ‘Get up boy, conviction still on his record. out her conviction. Civil
your name is Plessy — you’ve rights attorney Fred Gray,
got work to do,’” Keith Plessy Keith Plessy and Phoebe Fer- who represented Parks and
(AP) — A Louisiana board mediately available for com- said. guson, a descendant of John Martin Luther King Jr., has
on Friday voted to pardon ment. Howard Ferguson, the judge said he might file a suit to do
Homer Plessy, whose de- Homer Plessy was arrested in who oversaw his case in Or- the same for them.
cision to sit in a “whites- The Plessy v. Ferguson deci- 1892 after boarding the train leans Parish Criminal Dis-
only” railroad car to pro- sion cemented racial segrega- car as part of an effort by civil trict Court, now lead a non- But some civil rights advo-
test discrimination led to tion for another half-century, rights activists to challenge a profit that advocates for civil cates have said they don’t
the U.S. Supreme Court’s justifying whites-only spaces state law that mandated seg- rights education. want their arrest records ex-
1896 “separate but equal” in trains and buses, hotels, regated seating. punged.
ruling affirming state seg- theaters, schools and other “We cannot undo the wrongs
regation laws. public accommodations until Described in the Supreme of the past but we can and King biographer Clayborne
the Supreme Court unani- Court ruling as “of seven should acknowledge them,” Carson called his own civil
The state Board of Pardons’ mously overruled it with eighths Caucasian and one Phoebe Ferguson told the rights arrest record “a badge
unanimous decision to clear their Brown v. the Board of eighth African blood,” Plessy pardon board. of honor.” Expunging the re-
the Creole man’s record of a Education decision in 1954. could have passed for white. cord “doesn’t change the his-
conviction now goes to Gov. That decision led to the More than six decades be- The New Orleans City torical reality that you were
John Bel Edwards, who has widespread desegregation fore Parks was arrested in Council honored Plessy’s arrested,” he told the Atlanta
final say over the pardon. He of schools and the eventual Alabama, police forcibly re- role in history in 2018 by giv- Journal-Constitution
was out of state and not im- stripping away of vestiges of moved Plessy from the car, ing his name to a section of

Slaying of Chinese student in Chicago spurs call for action

(AP) — The University announced. During a Wednesday vigil
of Chicago’s president is “The violence afflicting Chi- there, Xi Cheng, who had “I can feel he loves Chicago
urging city officials and cago is on the same scale as Zheng, who graduated from known Zheng for six months, so much,” Cheng said. “I can
police to treat Chicago’s a public health crisis and de- the University of Hong Kong remembered him as a “really feel he really enjoyed here
rising violence as a “pub- mands a commensurate re- in 2019 and earned his mas- positive, nice person.” She and loves this (city) so it’s re-
lic health crisis” follow- sponse,” he said in the state- ter’s degree in statistics from said the two became friends ally tragic to hear.”
ing the fatal shooting of a ment that said the school the University of Chicago after they connected online.
Chinese student during an has been in contact with the last summer, was the third The Chinese American As-
armed robbery near cam- mayor’s office, Chicago po- University of Chicago stu- Cheng, 22, choked up as she sociation of Greater Chicago
pus. lice, local alderman and oth- dent killed this year, WBBM- recalled Zheng and his love has started an online memo-
ers. TV reported. for sports, especially table rial fundraiser to help cover
Shaoxiong “Dennis” Zheng, tennis, and photography. travel and legal expenses for
24, was standing on a side- So far this year, there have In January, Yiran Fan, a “May he rest in peace,” she Zheng’s family.
walk in a residential area been five slayings in Hyde 30-year-old Ph.D. student said.
Tuesday afternoon when wit- Park, compared with none who was a native of Beijing,
nesses said a gunman stepped at the same time in 2020, as was randomly killed while
from a car and Zheng ap- violence across Chicago has sitting in a car in a parking
peared to struggle with the risen for two straight years, garage — the first of seven
robber before a shot went off. the Chicago Sun-Times re- people, from Chicago to
ported. Evanston, shot by a gunman,
The assailant returned to the police said. Fan and four oth-
car and fled, and Zheng was Chicago has had at least 698 er people died.
pronounced dead at the Uni- homicides this year, com-
versity of Chicago Medical pared with 680 at the same And in July, Max Lewis, 20,
Center. No arrests have been time last year. That’s well a third-year student who had
made in the killing in the above the 442 homicides that just accepted an investment
Hyde Park neighborhood on city had experienced by this banking offer, was fatally shot
the city’s South Side. point in 2019, the Sun-Times by a stray bullet on the Chi-
reported. cago Transit Authority Green
University of Chicago Presi- Line as he was riding home
dent Paul Alivisatos said Mayor Lori Lightfoot prom- from his summer internship
in a statement Wednesday ised Wednesday to meet with in downtown Chicago.
expressing sadness over police and community lead-
Zheng’s slaying that the uni- ers “to determine concrete, At the site where Zheng was
versity community and local tangible measures (that) can shot, mourners have added
residents “see a clear and ur- be taken to prevent tragedies flowers to a growing memo-
gent need to strengthen pub- such as these in the future” rial to him.
lic safety.” but no specifics have yet been