Plessy v. Ferguson was a deliberately staged test case against segregation

Evidence

In the Plessy case, the plaintiff, Homer Plessy, was a light-​skinned black, who could apparently pass for white. Plessy was a test case, brought by a committee in New Orleans, which had been formed to fight the segregation law. Plessy bought a first-​class train ticket, told the conductor he was black, and then refused to move from the white section of the car to the “colored” section. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2935

One of the Court’s most disastrous opinions, in this regard, was in the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson. This test case had been designed to seek a declaration from the Supreme Court that segregation was illegal. Homer Plessy was a light-skinned black man and Louisiana citizen who purchased a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railway. The train required segregated cars for the “white and colored races” on account of a Louisiana statute that stated: “No person or persons shall be permitted to occupy seats in coaches, other than the ones assigned to them, on account of the race they belong to.” Plessy was one-eighth black and perhaps as much as seven-eighths white, and he appeared white. That was why he was chosen as a plaintiff, to try to demonstrate the absurdities of Jim Crow. It is likely also the explanation for why he was allowed to buy a first-class ticket. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 382

Categorization

• CANDY: The fact that Plessy was light-skinned and could pass for white, yet told the conductor he was black, is a striking elevator-conversation detail.
• QUESTION: Does the Plessy case’s staging as a test case actually hurt the NAACP’s later strategy, or did the Court’s refusal to look past its crafted facts matter less than the doctrine issued?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2935; Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 382
• XREF: connects to: Lawyers deliberately seek test-case communities to litigate novel discrimination theories. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 454