Political Career
While living on the abandoned plantation, White began his legal studies. He then enrolled at the University of Louisiana, now named Tulane University, to complete his study of the law at what is now known as the Tulane University Law School. He subsequently was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in New Orleans in 1868. He briefly served in the Louisiana State Senate in 1874 and as an Associate Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from 1879 to 1880. He was politically affiliated with Governor Francis T. Nicholls, a former Confederate general.
He became famous in Louisiana for helping to abolish the Louisiana Lottery, a hotbed of corruption the fate of which was taken before the state's Supreme Court which ordered it discontinued in 1894.
The state's legislature appointed White to the United States Senate in 1891 to succeed James B. Eustis. He served until his resignation on March 12, 1894, when he was nominated by President Grover Cleveland (D) to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1896 he sided with the seven justices whose majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson approved segregation.
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