Plessy Park is a fitting name for proposed New Orleans riverfront park: A letter to the editor

The Times-Picayune reported that names are being sought for the "Reinventing the Crescent" park, which will run along the riverfront from Elysian Fields to Mazant Street. Although some suggestion has been made that the park be named after a living person, Louisiana law prohibits that.

It would be fitting to name the park after one of Louisiana's most overlooked historical figures, Homer Plessy. In 1892, more than 60 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger, Plessy, an African-American, boarded a rail car at Press and Royal streets. He was seeking to overturn the law that prohibited African-Americans from sitting in "white only" rail cars.

After being arrested, Plessy challenged the law, which eventually ended with the Supreme Court's infamous decision upholding segregated rail cars.

We already have a statue in front of the Louisiana Supreme Court honoring Justice Edward White, a Louisianian who voted with Supreme Court majority against Plessy, thereby making "separate but equal" the law of the land. The time is long overdue that we balance Justice White's statue with a statue honoring our city's brave and visionary civil rights advocate who sought to overturn segregationist laws. It would be fitting for Mr. Plessy's statue to be erected just a few blocks from where he boarded the rail car -- in our new riverfront "Plessy Park."

Thomas W. Milliner