After reconstruction ended in 1877 the Southern State Government still remained a “white man’s government.” The state legislatures passed the Jim Crow laws in the 1880’s to legally segregate the races and they were enforced by criminal penalties. In 1890, the Louisiana legislature passed a law requiring that all trains have separate sitting areas for the different races and failing to follow this law and sit in the wrong area would result in a fine of twenty five dollars or up to twenty days in jail. Homer Adolph Plessy was a businessman living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana during the time of the Jim Crow Laws. He only had one African-American grandparent; therefore, he did not consider himself African-American. However, the Louisiana law
