New Orleans' Comité des Citoyens Strategically Challenges Segregation Law

The Comité des Citoyens, a New Orleans civil rights organization led by Creole leaders including Rodolphe Desdunes and Louis Martinet, deliberately chose Homer Plessy — seven-eighths white by ancestry — to challenge Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890. They hired white attorney Albion Tourgée to argue the case. The strategy was calculated to expose the absurdity of racial classification, though the Supreme Court rejected their argument.