Who was Plessy?

Most folks know the U.S. Supreme Court decision that bears his name---Plessy v Ferguson. But who was Plessy? The N.Y. Times reports the answer today in one their "Overlooked No More" Obituaries":

"The ruling came to be regarded as one of the most ignominious in the Supreme Court’s history. It would define the Jim Crow era, in which people of color were summarily segregated from not only trains but also schools, theaters, public buildings, lodgings, lunch counters and much else over the next 58 years, until the Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, unanimously dismissed the “separate but equal” doctrine in ruling in 1954 that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.

By then Plessy had long been dead."

The paper's long delayed obituary explains who Plessy was, and how his act of disobedience presaged Rosa Parks by  more than half a century.