Homer Plessy is arrested in New Orleans for violating the Separate Car Act. His case will go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upholds the law on May 18, 1896.

Businessman and civil rights supporter Arthur George Gaston or A.G. Gaston was born on this date. Gaston was the grandson of a slave. He amassed a fortune worth millions of dollars.

Inventor and ex-slave Andrew J. Beard patented his rotary steam engine on this date.

Former slave John H. Murphy, Sr., merges his paper, The Sunday School Helper with The Ledger and The Afro-American, both also church publications, and keeps the name The Afro-American. Three decades later, it has evolved from a one-page weekly to the most widely circulated black newspaper on the East Coast. The Afro-American continues to thrive under family leadership today.

The first Tuskegee Conference at Tuskegee Institute was held on this date in Alabama.