Meet Homer Plessy, the 1/8 African-blood descendant from Louisiana, who tested the Louisiana law which required persons with any discernible trace of Negro blood be segregated from white people. Plessy was supported by 'gens de couleur' merchants and landowners in an attempt to overturn that Louisiana state law, who hired his lawyer, Albion Winegar Tourgee. The U.S. Supreme Court later affirmed the Louisiana 'Jim Crow' law in 1896.