Louis A. Martinet

…members of the committee was Louis A. Martinet, a Creole attorney and doctor who had also founded the Daily Crusader, and he and his newspaper became the leading opponents of the law. After its passage his paper called for both a legal challenge and a boycott of those railroads that…

Martinet did not consider any of the Black lawyers in New Orleans competent to raise a constitutional question, since, as he explained, they practiced almost entirely in the police courts.

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 claim…

…again his trio 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…