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Sender: American Memory Fellows <AMFELLOWS@RS8.LOC.GOV>
Poster: Frances Jacobson <francey@UIUC.EDU>
Subject: Re: picture of Homer Plessy
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Carolyn, you probably don't need this any more, but here's what I found
out. We have a book called _Plessy v. Ferguson: Separate But Equal?_ by
Harvey Fireside, which is part of the Landmark Supreme Court Cases series
that Enslow publishes for the secondary school level. So it's about as
secondary as a source can get. Here's a quote from the introduction: "We
know much more about the legal results of Homer Plessy's actions than we
know about the man himself. Thousands of the lawyers' and judges' words
have been preserved in law books, but little was ever written about Homer
Plessy. Who was Homer Adolph Plessy? He was a shoemaker who lived with
his wife, Louise, at 244 1/2 North Claiborne Avenue, in the Faubourg
Treme. This was an integrated middle-class district in New Orleans. We
have no pictures of Homer Plessy. All that was said about him in court,
however, indicates that he looked no different from any of the white
passengers. According to his lawyer, Plessy was seven-eighths Caucasian --
he had seven white great-grandparents and only one black great-grandparent."
It wouldn't surprise me that there truly are no pictures of Homer Plessy,
who seems to have survived more as a symbol than a historical person. This
book does have photos of some of the other principles -- the lawyer who
served as senior counsel for Plessy, the supreme court justices (all,
incidentally, 100% caucasian). The story itself did not make front page
news at the time. The book includes an excerpt from the New York Times,
which covered the story in the second section of the paper as part of the
railroad news.
So, what I'm learning is that primary sources have to be created and then
kept by someone...
Hope this helps,
Frances
At 09:13 AM 3/23/00 -0800, you wrote:
>Does anyone know where to find a picture of Homer Plessy or the Plessy v.
>Ferguson case?
>
>Thanks,
>Carolyn Karis
>************************************
>
>Carolyn Karis
>Herbst Library
>Urban School of San Francisco
>1563 Page Street
>San Francisco, CA 94117
>ckaris@urbanschool.org
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