SEPARATION OF PASSENGERS ON STEAMBOATS
As already suggested, the “Jim Crow” laws apply to three classes of vehicles, namely: steamboats, railroad cars, and street cars. There is comparatively little legislation about white and colored passengers on steamboats. North Carolina[[538]] is the only State to include steamboats in the regular “Jim Crow” law. It requires all steamboat companies engaged as common carriers in the transportation of passengers for hire to provide separate but equal accommodations for the white and colored races of all steamboats carrying passengers. The violation of this law is punishable by a fine of one hundred dollars; each day is considered a separate offence.
On February 9, 1900, the Virginia[[539]] legislature enacted a statute requiring the separation of white and colored passengers on all steamboats carrying passengers and plying in the waters within the jurisdiction of the State in the sitting, sleeping, and eating apartments, so far as the “construction of the boat and due consideration for comfort of passengers” would permit. There must be no difference in the quality of accommodations. The law makes an exception of nurses and other attendants traveling with their employers, and officers in charge of prisoners. For disobeying the law, the boat officer is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not less than twenty-five dollars nor more than one hundred dollars. Any passenger wilfully disobeying the law is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not less than five dollars nor more than fifty dollars or by imprisonment for not less than thirty days, or both. The boat officer may eject an offending passenger at any landing place, and neither he nor the steamboat company will be liable. In 1901, the above law[[540]] was made more stringent by omitting the provision about the construction of the boat and consideration for the comfort of the passengers, quoted above. In 1904, South Carolina[[541]] required all ferries to have separate cabins for white and colored passengers.
The above legislation seems to be the only legislation as to steamboats up to the present; but it does not measure the separation of the races on steamboats, inasmuch as the companies in the various States have adopted regulations requiring separate accommodations for the races. This custom applies to interstate as well as to intrastate travel. The steamers plying between Boston and the ports of the South, for instance, provide separate dining tables, separate toilet rooms, and separate smoking rooms for the white and colored passengers. This regulation of interstate travel is upheld by two Federal cases, one in Georgia[[542]] in 1879 and the other in Maryland[[543]] in 1885, which held in substance, that, inasmuch as Congress has enacted no law which forbids interstate common carriers from separating white and colored passengers so long as the accommodations are equal, during congressional inaction, the companies may make their own regulations.