East Louisiana Railroad

The East Louisiana Railroad (officially the East Louisiana Railroad Company), chartered in 1887, was a railroad in Louisiana and Mississippi, United States. It was formed to connect Pearl River, Louisiana, to Covington, Louisiana, and Lake Pontchartrain.^[1]

East Louisiana Railroad

Advertisement for the Company, c. 1891
Overview
Dates of operation	1887–1905
Successor	New Orleans Great Northern Railway
Technical
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Length	55 miles (89 km)

The company played a key role in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson by arranging for Homer Plessy, a black man, to board a whites-only passenger car. In 1889, the company chartered trains to a boxing match between John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain. 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 and Covington, along with "such points or places in the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, as also to such points or places on Lake Pontchartrain as the board of directors ... may determine".^[1]

In 1896, the East Louisiana Railroad worked with Homer Plessy, 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.^[2] 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.^[2] 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 v. Ferguson.^[2][3] Plessy and his supporters in the Comité des Citoyens ultimately sought to overturn Jim Crow laws and by extension racial segregation in the United States with the court case, but were unsuccessful.^[4][5]

In 1889, the East Louisiana Railroad played a key role in a fight between boxers John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain. The company offered to build a new amphitheater along its line in Abita Springs, with a capacity of 2,000 spectators.^[6] 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.^[7]

The East Louisiana Railroad was merged into a newly formed company, the New Orleans Great Northern Railway, in 1905.^[8]

References

1. "East Louisiana Railroad Company Charter". The Times-Picayune. August 8, 1887. p. 7. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
2. Thomas, Brook (July 15, 1996). Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents. Macmillan Higher Education. pp. 8–9. ISBN 978-1-319-24299-2.
3. Heriot, Gail (May 18, 2018). "Don't Blame the Railroad for Plessy v. Ferguson". Reason.com. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
4. Louis Gates Jr., Henry (January 17, 2013). "Who Were Plessy and Ferguson? African American History Blog". PBS. Retrieved August 24, 2022.
5. Hunter, Brittany (June 8, 2022). "Plessy v. Ferguson, and its plaintiff Homer Plessy, 130 years later". Pacific Legal Foundation. Retrieved August 24, 2022.
6. "The Sullivan-Kilrain Fight". Meriden Daily Republican. June 22, 1889. p. 3. Retrieved July 30, 2022.
7. Waters, Mike (June 9, 2012). "End of a boxing era: The tale of Jake Kilrain vs. John L. Sullivan, the final bare-knuckle heavyweight title fight". Syracuse. Retrieved July 30, 2022.
8. "Building Railroad in Gulf States". Buffalo Evening News. May 7, 1905. p. 6. Retrieved July 31, 2022.