BARBER-SHOPS
Thirteen States provide that barbers must serve all persons without regard to race or color.
In 1889 a barber in Lincoln, Nebraska, refused to shave a Negro because he was “colored.” The Civil Rights Bill of that State mentions barbers. The court[[272]] held: “A barber, by opening a shop and putting out his sign, thereby invites every orderly and well-behaved person who may desire his services to enter his shop during business hours. The statute will not permit him to say to one, you were a slave or the son of a slave, therefore I will not shave you. Such prejudices are unworthy of our better manhood, and are clearly prohibited by the statute.” Barber-shops were included within the provisions of the Massachusetts Civil Rights Bill in 1893, but, as a matter of fact, Negroes are not even now given the same accommodations as whites in barber-shops in Massachusetts.
The statute of Connecticut requires equality of service in “places of public accommodation.” A barber refused to serve one Faulkner because he was a Negro, and the latter brought suit on the ground that a barber-shop is a place of public accommodation and, hence, within the Civil Rights Bill of the State. The court[[273]] held that the barber-shop is not, in its nature, different from the places of business run for private gain, and that the common law has never recognized it as possessing the quality of a place of public accommodation, as a hotel, public conveyance, etc.
It may be added here that most of the cases have involved the point as to what are places of public accommodation or amusement or resort. If the place is mentioned in the Civil Rights Bill, it is, of course, within the prohibition, and it is a violation of the statute even to require separate accommodations, although equal in every other respect. But a vast deal of litigation has arisen out of instances of Negroes being denied accommodation in places considered public in their nature but which are not mentioned in the Civil Rights Bill of the State wherein the case arises.