Brown deferred to Louisiana law to determine whether Plessy was legally black or white. Later life After the Supreme Court ruling, Plessy's criminal trial went ahead in Ferguson's court in Louisiana on February 11, 1897. He pleaded guilty of violating the Separate Car Act, which carried a punishment of a $25 fine or twenty days in jail. He opted to pay the fine. The Comité des Citoyens disbanded shortly after the trial's end. The shoemaking profession declined in the late 19th and early 20th centuries due to large-scale industrial production, so Plessy later took jobs as a laborer, warehouseman, clerk, and insurance premium collected for the black-owned People's Life Insurance Company. He died on March 1, 1925. His obituary read: "Homer Plessy — on Sunday, March 1, 1925, at 5:10 a.m. beloved husband of Louise Bordenave." He was buried in the Debergue-Blanco family tomb in Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Legacy The "Separate but Equal" doctrine, enshrined by the Plessy ruling, remained valid until 1954 when it was overturned by the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and later completely outlawed by the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. Though the Plessy case did not involve education, it formed the legal basis of separate school systems for the following fifty-eight years. On February 10, 2009, Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson, descendants of the players on both sides of the Supreme Court case, appeared together on TV station WLTV in New Orleans. They announced the formation of the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation for Education, Preservation and Outreach. The foundation will work to create new ways to teach the history of civil rights through film, art, and public programs designed to create an understanding of this historic case and its effect on the American conscience. On February 12, 2009, the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation of New Orleans honored the successes of the civil rights movement by taking part in the placing of a historical marker at the corner of Press and Royal Streets, the site of Homer Plessy's arrest in New Orleans in 1892. A portion of Press Street was renamed after Plessy in 2018. On January 5, 2022, Plessy was pardoned by John Bel Edwards, Governor of Louisiana, posthumously relieving Plessy of the conviction. There is no known photograph of Homer Plessy, though a photograph of P. B. S. Pinchback, a former governor of