AS SPECTATOR
The court room, while the court is in session, is open to all citizens, regardless of race or color. No instance has been found either in the statutes or judicial reports of one’s admission to or exclusion from the court room being dependent upon his race or color. It is to be noticed, however, in Southern court rooms that the spectators are separated by race, Negroes usually occupying seats on one side of the room and white people on the other. This must be entirely a matter of custom, as no case has been found of such separation being required by law or ordinance. While this point has not been deemed important enough for a special investigation, it is presumed that one will find the races separated in the court room in those States or communities where they are separated in other places—as in public conveyances, schools, and churches.
A Negro in the South, as elsewhere, has, legally and actually, as good an opportunity to observe court proceedings as a white person, though custom may require him to sit in a different part of the court room from that occupied by the latter.