Homer Plessy, Octoroons, and the Turbulent Legacy of the Separate Car Act
In the 19th Century, a man named Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths White and one-eighth Black, was once pejoratively referred to as an “octoroon”. Plessy grew up during the age of Reconstruction in New Orleans, a time when people of color were granted expanded civic and political rights. However, this era of relative racial progress…