Plessy and Ferguson: The Sequel

You must have seen that bit of old film showing veterans of the Union and Confederate Armies, aged and infirm every one, embracing in a huge festival of reconciliation, years after the Civil War. It's a riveting film, although one can't evade the notion that this was all part of the great drift towards pretending that the Civil War never happened. Anyway, now here (from the New Orleans Times-Picayune is a different sort of reconciliation:

Plessy and Ferguson unveil plaque marking their ancestors' actions

By Katy Reckdahl Staff writer

Today, Plessy versus Ferguson becomes Plessy and Ferguson when descendants of opposing parties in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court segregation case stand together to unveil a plaque at the former site of the Press Street Railroad Yards.

Standing behind Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson will be a large group of students, scholars, officials and activists who worked for years to honor the site where in 1892, Treme shoemaker Homer Plessy, a light-skinned black man, was arrested for sitting in a railway car reserved for white people.

People often think that his ancestor held some responsibility for the legalized segregation known as "separate but equal," said Keith Plessy, 52, a longtime New Orleans hotel bellman whose great-grandfather was Homer Plessy's first cousin....

Phoebe Ferguson, 51, a documentary filmmaker, left New Orleans in 1967 but moved back after discovering her great-great-grandfather's role in the infamous legal fight.

Judge John Howard Ferguson ruled against Plessy from his bench in Orleans Parish Criminal Court. ...

Fo[r a helpful meditation on the rewriting of Civlil War memories, go here.