Homer Plessy has finally been pardoned, 125 years after the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson case.

• "This is a day that should have never have had to happen," said Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who issued the pardon.

The big picture: Back in 1896, Supreme Court Justice John Harlan said the ruling "will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott Case."

• Harlan was the only dissenting vote in the 7-1 decision, which entrenched "separate but equal" segregation.
• 58 years later, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned Plessy v. Ferguson with Brown v. Board of Education.

Plessy's crime: Boarding a whites-only rail car in 1892 and refusing to leave, AP notes.

• The 30-year-old shoemaker was "white enough to gain access to the train and black enough to be arrested for doing so,” Keith Weldon Medley wrote in the book "We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson."

The bottom line: Relatives of Plessy were in attendance at today's pardoning, Axios' Oriana Gonzalez reports.

• "I'm holding back tears, y'all," said Keith Plessy, a descendant of Homer Plessy. "I feel like my feet are not touching the ground today because the ancestors are carrying me."

Go deeper on the case.

Acknowledging frustration with the pace of the federal investigation of the attack on the Capitol, Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a major speech this afternoon:

• "The actions we have taken thus far will not be our last."

Garland said the Justice Department "remains committed to holding all January 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on your democracy."

• "We understand that there are questions about how long the investigation will take and about what, exactly, we are doing."

"Our answer is, and will continue to be, the same answer we would give with respect to any ongoing investigation: As long as it takes, and whatever it takes, for justice to be done."

Video of the speech.

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Amid the look-backs for tomorrow's first anniversary of the assault on the Capitol, here's an unusually solemn, memorable collection:

• Frank Thorp V, a Capitol Hill producer and reporter for NBC News, has a sideline for taking photos with a large-format Speed Graphic camera from the 1950s, like the old-fashioned news cameras you see in the movies.

Above (left to right) are the Speed Graphic's view of Capitol Police Lt. Rani Brooks, Officer Anthony Booth and Capt. Carneysha C. Mendoza — photographed by Thorp ahead of the insurrection's 100-day mark.

Thorp, who was in NBC's Senate booth when the Capitol was breached, told me: "After a natural disaster, there's no debate about how bad it was for the people involved."

• "The people who experienced this — particularly the police officers — have to read the news and see politicians saying the attack wasn't that bad."

Go deeper: "After the Riot."