The East Louisiana Railroad was chartered on July 8, 1887, with authorization to connect Pearl River and Covington, along with "such points or places in the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, as also to such points or places on Lake Pontchartrain as the board of directors ... may determine".

Plessy, who was one-eighth Black, arranged with the railroad to board an East Louisiana Railroad train and enter a whites-only car and inform a conductor of his race, upon which a private detective would be on hand to arrest Plessy when he refused to move to the Black-only car.

[2][3] Plessy and his supporters in the Comité des Citoyens ultimately sought to overturn Jim Crow laws and by extension racial segregation in the United States with the court case, but were unsuccessful.

[4][5] In 1889, the East Louisiana Railroad played a key role in a fight between boxers John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain.

[7] The East Louisiana Railroad was merged into a newly formed company, the New Orleans Great Northern Railway, in 1905.