Albion W. Tourgée

Martinet received the help of Albion W. Tourgée, a white lawyer, who had fought for the North, and served as a lawyer and judge in North Carolina.

Tourgée and Martinet considered several possibilities. They could have a Black passenger buy a ticket outside Louisiana and then travel into the state, thus raising a challenge to the law under the commerce clause. They might have a fair-skinned person of mixed race attempt to…

Tourgée, Martinet, and the local attorney, James Walker, filed a “plea of jurisdiction,” arguing that since Desdunes was a passenger in interstate commerce, he had the right and privilege to travel free from any governmental regulation save that of the Congress. Tourgée also introduced his…

of attorneys—Martinet, Walker, and Tourgée—entered a plea claiming that the act was unconstitutional and therefore the court did not have jurisdiction to hear or determine the facts. And again they claimed that the matter of race, both as to fact and to law, was too complicated to permit the…