There are more ways than ever to listen to History Daily ad-free.

Listen with Wondry Plus in the Wondari app,

or you can get all of History Daily plus other fantastic history podcasts at intohistory.com.

It's February 24, 1892, at a bustling railway station in New Orleans, Louisiana.

As a train lurches to a halt,

the waiting white passengers eagerly climb into its first compartment.

While they stream into the rail car, a group of black passengers hangs back,

unsure when and where to enter the train.

The state of Louisiana recently passed the separate car act,

which requires white and non-white passengers to sit in different train coaches.

Any passenger who refuses to sit in the coach assigned to them

was liable to be fined or even imprisoned.

But today, Daniel De Dune is ready to defy the statute.

Daniel is a volunteer for a local civil rights group called the Citizens Committee,

which has orchestrated a test case to challenge the constitutionality of the separate car act.

As the white passengers file into the train, so too does Daniel.

A light-skinned man, a mixed race, he's forbidden from sitting in a white's only compartment

because he's one-eighth black.

But he deliberately violates the separate car act and takes a seat anyway.

If everything goes to plan, Daniel will be arrested,

and the Citizens Committee will be able to argue their case in court,

giving them a chance to challenge the law's legitimacy

...