LILAH CREWS-PLESS: When I first went looking for Vera's house in West Oakland, I knew which one was hers before I checked the house number. It's surrounded by a tall, weathered fence that barely contains the plant life thriving behind it ... In 2004 the house next to hers burned down in a drug-related incident, and Vera managed to persuade the estate to gift her the house. Amazingly it worked. And after repairing it with the insurance settlement, she expanded the backyard ...
After the Civil War and Reconstruction came Plessy v. Ferguson and the (in theory) idea of ?separate but equal? which was in practice, of course, separate but horribly unequal. Attendant to Plessy came strict enforcement of the ...
in june of 1892, with conscious intent to test the constitutionality of louisiana's racially-segregated railcar laws, homer plessy took a seat in the white car of the train, refused to move, and was arrested and jailed. ...
