The East Louisiana Railroad (officially the East Louisiana Railroad Company), chartered in 1887, was a railroad in

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

and

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

, United States. It was formed to connect

Pearl River, Louisiana Pearl River is a town in St. Tammany Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The population was 2,506 at the 2010 U.S. census, and 2,618 at the 2020 population estimates program. It is part of the New Orleans– Metairie–Kenner metropol ...

, to

Covington, Louisiana Covington is a city in, and the parish seat of, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 11,564 at the 2020 United States census. It is located at a fork of the Bogue Falaya and the Tchefuncte River. Covington is part of ...

, and

Lake Pontchartrain Lake Pontchartrain ( ) is an estuary located in southeastern Louisiana in the United States. It covers an area of with an average depth of . Some shipping channels are kept deeper through dredging. It is roughly oval in shape, about from west ...

. The company played a key role in the 1896 case of ''

Plessy v. Ferguson ''Plessy v. Ferguson'', 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality ...

'' by arranging for

Homer Plessy Homer Adolph Plessy (born Homère Patris Plessy; 1862 or March 17, 1863 – March 1, 1925) was an American shoemaker and activist, best known as the plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court decision ''Plessy v. Ferguson''. He staged an act of ...

, a black man, to board a whites-only passenger car. In 1889, the company chartered trains to a boxing match between

John L. Sullivan John Lawrence Sullivan (October 15, 1858 – February 2, 1918), known simply as John L. among his admirers, and dubbed the "Boston Strong Boy" by the press, was an American boxer recognized as the first heavyweight champion of gloved boxing ...

and

Jake Kilrain John Joseph Killion (February 9, 1859 – December 22, 1937), more commonly known as Jake Kilrain, was a famous American bare-knuckle fighter and glove boxer of the 1880s. Early life Kilrain found employment as a teenager in Somerville, Mas ...

. In 1905, it was merged into the New Orleans Great Northern Railway.

History

The East Louisiana Railroad was chartered on July 8, 1887, with authorization to connect

Pearl River The Pearl River, also known by its Chinese name Zhujiang or Zhu Jiang in Mandarin pinyin or Chu Kiang and formerly often known as the , is an extensive river system in southern China. The name "Pearl River" is also often used as a catch-all ...

and Covington, along with "such points or places in the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, as also to such points or places on

as the board of directors ... may determine". In 1896, the East Louisiana Railroad worked with

, a Louisiana resident, to challenge Louisiana's Separate Car Act, which mandated racial segregation in railroad passenger cars. Plessy, who was one-eighth Black, arranged with the railroad to board an East Louisiana Railroad train and enter a whites-only car and inform a conductor of his race, upon which a private detective would be on hand to arrest Plessy when he refused to move to the Black-only car. When Plessy told the conductor his race, and then refused to leave the car, the train was stopped and the conductor and private detective removed him from the train. A number of railroad companies in Louisiana were opposed to the law because it was more expensive to provide separate railroad cars for different races, including the East Louisiana Railroad, which tacitly supported Plessy's efforts to have the law overturned, culminating in the Supreme Court Case ''

''. Plessy and his supporters in the

Comité des Citoyens The ('Citizens' Committee' in French language, French) was a civil rights group made up of African Americans, whites, and Louisiana Creole people, Creoles. It is most well known for its involvement in ''Plessy v. Ferguson''. The Citizens' Committe ...

ultimately sought to overturn

Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...

and by extension

racial segregation in the United States In the United States, racial segregation is the systematic separation of facilities and services such as Housing in the United States, housing, Healthcare in the United States, healthcare, Education in the United States, education, Employment in ...

with the court case, but were unsuccessful. In 1889, the East Louisiana Railroad played a key role in a fight between boxers

and

. The company offered to build a new amphitheater along its line in Abita Springs, with a capacity of 2,000 spectators. For the fight, the railroad operated three specially chartered passenger trains from New Orleans to the location of the fight, which occurred in Richburg, Mississippi. The East Louisiana Railroad was merged into a newly formed company, the New Orleans Great Northern Railway, in 1905.

References

{{Reflist Defunct Louisiana railroads Railway companies established in 1887