On February 24, 1892, Daniel Desdunes boarded the Louisville-Nashville Railroad and took a seat on a "White Only" passenger car. In defiance to the coachman's orders, he refused to remove himself from the coach. In 1890, the Louisiana Legislature passed Acts 111 which made it unlawful for a black person to board a train coach reserved for white citizens. Daniel was arrested. He appeared before Judge John Ferguson of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court , Section A. His case was dismissed because the Louisiana Supreme Court held that only Congress, not the state legislature, could regulate interstate transportation.
Daniel's act of defiance spurned the subsequent acts of many others, including Homer Adolph Plessy, who defied the Louisiana's Jim Crow laws of the 1890s.