Race Distinctions in American Law

by Gilbert Thomas Stephenson

RACE DISTINCTIONS NOT CONFINED TO ONE SECTION

Race distinctions are not confined to any one section of the country. This conclusion is the most patent of all. There is scarcely a State or Territory in the Union where legislative or judicial records do not reveal the actual existence of at least some race distinctions. Of the twenty-six States and Territories that prohibit intermarriage, more than half, extending from Delaware to Oregon, are outside the South. Negroes have, on account of their race, been excluded, usually contrary to the local laws, from hotels in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New York, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa; from barber-shops, in Nebraska and Connecticut; from bootblack stands, in New York; from billiard-rooms, in Massachusetts; from saloons, in Minnesota and Ohio; from soda fountains, in Illinois; from theatres, in Illinois and New York; from skating rinks in New York and Iowa; and the bodies of Negroes have been refused burial with those of white persons in Pennsylvania. It is not meant here that Negroes are always excluded from such places in these States, but that instances of such exclusions are found in the laws. Most of the States have at one time or another made distinctions between the races in schools. California and other States of the Far West are demanding separate schools for Japanese. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, besides other States of the Middle West, clash from time to time with their school boards for attempting to separate the races in schools. Delaware is diligent in providing separate schools for white persons and Negroes. In Massachusetts, until 1857, the school board of Boston provided a separate school for Negroes in that city. As to public conveyances, the term “Jim Crow,” applied to a car set apart for Negroes, was first used in Massachusetts, and it was in Pennsylvania that the first leading case involving the right of street car companies to separate their passengers by race arose. Instances of actual discrimination against Negroes by common carriers were found in Illinois, Iowa, and California. How common race distinctions are in the States mentioned the above resumé does not clearly show, because the great majority of grievances caused by race distinctions do not reach the court. But when one finds that the legislature has deemed it advisable to enact a law against race distinctions, it is reasonable to assume that they did in fact exist. For instance, five States, all outside the South, prohibit discriminations by insurance companies on account of race. Had these companies not evinced signs of discrimination against Negroes, such statutes would not have been enacted. It is well known that race distinctions are common in the South.

Were this general prevalence of race distinctions fully realized, the result would be a kindlier feeling one to another among the white people of the various sections. They would then see that the presence or absence of race distinctions is due, not to any inherent difference in the character of the people, but to diverse conditions and environment. When, therefore, the Negro children of Upper Alton, Illinois, are seen to constitute an appreciable percentage of the school population, the people of that town, as the people of a Southern town would do under similar circumstances, demand for them a separate school.