New Orleans' Comité des Citoyens Strategically Challenges Segregation Law

The Comité des Citoyens, a New Orleans civil rights organization led by Rodolphe Desdunes and Louis Martinet, chose Homer Plessy, seven-eighths white by ancestry, to challenge Louisiana's 1890 Separate Car Act. They hired attorney Albion Tourgée to expose the absurdity of racial classification. The Supreme Court rejected their argument in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.