Homer Plessy, a free man who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black, agreed to participate in a test case to challenge a Louisiana law known as the Separate Car Act. The law required that railroads provided separate cars and facilities for whites and blacks. Plessy was told to vacate the whites-only car; he refused and was arrested. The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, which ruled that mandatory racial segregation was not a violation of the 14th Amendment.