Amy Nathan - Together: An Inspiring Response to the Separate-But-Equal Supreme Court Decision that Divided America

TOGETHER

Discover the inspiring partnership that formed
more than a century after the Supreme Courts
infamous separate-but-equal decision.

Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson were both born in New Orleans in 1957. Sixty-five years earlier, in 1892, a member of each of their families met in a Louisiana courtroom when Judge John Howard Ferguson found Homer Plessy guilty of breaking the law by sitting in a train car for white passengers. The case of Plessy v. Ferguson went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that separate-but-equal was constitutional, sparking decades of unjust laws and discriminatory attitudes.

In Together, Amy Nathan threads the personal stories of Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson into the larger history of the Plessy v. Ferguson case, race relations, and civil rights movements in New Orleans and throughout the U.S. She tells the inspiring tale of how Keith and Phoebe came together to change the ending of the story that links their families in history. Its a flip on the script, said Keith.

Some of the things I loved about Together are its connections of critical big historic moments to individual personal understandings; its readable summary of Reconstruction; and its theme of inspiring others, both the whole concept of descendants coming together to make change, and the way readers can see specific examples of what has been and can be done.

Dr. Mary Battenfeld, American and
New England Studies, Boston University

Cover Art: A panel from Ayo Scotts mural These Are Times: The Legacy of Homer Plessy, which is located in Plessy Park in New Orleans, Louisiana, commissioned by the NOCCA Institute. Ayo Scott / http://ayoscott.com

In his website description of this section of the mural, the artist poses a question: what might liberty and justice look like through the eyes of another person.

First Paul Dry Books Edition, 2021

Paul Dry Books, Inc.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
www.pauldrybooks.com

Copyright 2021 Amy Nathan

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 202094529

eISBN: 978-1-58988-347-5

For Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson

CONTENTS

TOGETHER

Courtesy Keith Plessy

Courtesy Phoebe Ferguson

Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson, about seven years old.

L ike all the boys in my neighborhood, I liked to play football and baseball in local parks, said Keith Plessy, who grew up in New Orleans in the 1950s and 60s. The closest park in walking distance from my house had space for two baseball fields, and room for a football field between the baseball fields. It featured a swimming pool in the summer, too. But I was never allowed to play there as a child on Saturdays and Sundays. The park had a rule: Only white kids could play there on weekends.

Keith and other children of color could stand outside the fence and watch the white kids play. But we couldnt go in. On days when we had the park, the white kids couldnt come into the park, either. There wasnt a sign with that rule. It was just understood that white kids had the park all day every weekend. We had to squeeze in our playing after school, before it got dark, explained Keith.

As a child, I was always questioning things when it came to the color of a persons skinwhy people who were considered to be white got better treatment than others. I lived in a multi-racial neighborhood, he noted. There were African Americans, Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, Italian Americans, and Native Americans. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether people were Black or white. Ive been called Puerto Rican several times. On some streets people got along like we were family. But in other areas, some boys might beat him up. It wasnt discussed much at home or at school.

Courtesy Wes Michaels, Spackman Mossop Michaels

St. Roch Park, where Keith played as a child.

Figuring out where he could and couldnt go in his neighborhood wasnt easy. There were restaurants that wouldnt let Black people come inside to eat. We had to go around to the back door and order food to take out. Some white shopkeepers were nice, but others werent. At one bakery shop, the lady behind the counter kept skipping me. Any white customer that came in, she would say, Oh, what do you need? But it was like I wasnt there. So Keith took the ice cream sandwich he wanted to buy and walked out of the store. Then the shopkeeper noticed himand almost had him arrested. The police called his mother to come get him.

I got a good spanking when I got home. My mother said, Thats not what we do. We dont steal. But I told her, They kept skipping me. So my mother told me, Next time, put it down, and dont go to that store again. Go places where you wont be treated that way. Dont let anyone take your sunshine away from you.

Courtesy Keith Plessy

Keiths parents, Marie Verna Mae Blanchard Plessy and Paul Gustave Plessy.

He loved his elementary school, but it got its start in the early 1900s because of another situation that didnt make sense to Keith as a child. The African American community had to create this school on its own because the city refused to provide an elementary school for children of color in Keiths neighborhood. Even years later, in the early 1960s, when Keith was ready to start elementary school, he and many other children of color still werent allowed to attend the citys schools for white children. It puzzled me a lot why there were these rules, said Keith.

Confusing rules about skin color puzzled Phoebe Ferguson as a child, too. The same age as Keith, she lived in a different New Orleans neighborhood and went to a private elementary school that only white students attended. She had a babysitter that she loved, Minnie Lou Williams, who had helped take care of her since Phoebe was six months old. We did a lot of fun things together, Phoebe recalled. We played together in the backyard, or went to nearby playgrounds to swing. We played Go Fish a lot. Minnie took me trick-or-treating, too.

Courtesy Phoebe Ferguson

Minnie Lou Williams, the babysitter who took care of Phoebe as a child, in a photo from the 1980s.