CASTE ON THE CARS.
Our new-made fellow-citizens at the South are coming to such consciousness of their civil and political rights as leads them to demand the protection of law. The Cincinnati Southern Railway has recently paid a fine of $1,000 for putting a colored man who had a first-class ticket into a second-class car. The Atlanta & West Point Railroad, for a similar offence, has been compelled to pay a fine of $400. The Georgia Railroad, having been sued, thought it best not to stand a trial, and paid $700 to a colored young woman who was put off its train because she was in a first-class car with a first-class ticket. At Nashville two or three suits have been entered in the same line. Bishop Payne, as is well known, having been put off from a Florida road, is seeking legal redress. Bishop Cain, also of the African M. E. Church, having purchased a first-class ticket on the Sunset route, in Texas, was about to enter the car to which his ticket authorized him to go. Some white people who were also getting aboard said that they would not go if the black man should take a seat in that car. He then entered the parlor car, paying the extra dollar for his seat, and now has sued the company for $20,000.
It is a clear case that the law for common carriers requires the companies to allow passengers who have first-class tickets to ride in first-class cars. The 14th amendment declares that “no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court, referring to this language in the recent case of Strander v. Virginia (10 Otto, 307), which related to the exclusion of colored men from juries, said: “What is this but declaring that the law in the State shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the States, and in regard to the colored race, for whose protection the amendment was primarily designed, that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color.”
It is clear that the railway companies are doing better and better in this matter. Some allow colored passengers to go without hindrance where their first-class tickets would take them. Other railway officials have instructed their train men that if colored people with first-class tickets make request to enter the first-class cars, they shall be allowed so to do, though the brakemen will keep them out as long as they can. Our colored friends must be patient while public sentiment is advancing and the law is coming to their help. Many colored people are as sensitive to the nicotine poison as any white ladies, and it is a cruelty, aside from the injustice, to thrust them into the smoking-car.