Homer Plessy boarded the train in New Orleans, first-class ticket in hand. His instructions were clear: Head for the “whites-only” car and await his arrest. The June 1892 incident played out just as expected—a clockwork application of a new Louisiana law that relegated Black passengers to racially segregated train cars.

The mixed-race man’s insistence on riding in a whites-only car wasn’t spontaneous: It was an act of civil disobedience that a local civil rights organization had organized to challenge the law. Yet Plessy’s arrest led to a landmark Supreme Court case that would provide federal sanction for decades of Jim Crow segregation.

Now, nearly 130 years after Plessy boarded that train, his infraction has been pardoned. In a nod to the historic