Homer Plessy, US civil rights pioneer, receives pardon 130 years on

Plessy's act of civil disobedience led to court decision that legalized separate but equal' doctrine and ushered in Jim Crow era

In front of the old New Orleans train station where, in 1892, Homer Plessy engaged in a trailblazing act of civil disobedience that led to the landmark Plessy v Ferguson supreme court decision, Louisiana's governor stood 130 years later and issued a posthumous pardon to the late civil rights pioneer.

Beneath a grey sky and in a ceremony laced with symbolism and repentance, Governor John Bel Edwards signed the pardon for Plessy, a Creole man of color who purchased a ticket for a whites-only train cabin and was subsequently arrested for violating Louisiana's Separate Car Act.