to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodation, advantages, facilities and privileges of inns, restaurants, eating houses, barber shops, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and all other places of public accommodation and amusement, subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law and applicable alike to all citizens.
In 1896, in Cecil v. Green (60 Ill. App., 61; affirmed, 161 Ill. 265), the court decided that the expression "all other places of public accommodation" embraced only places of the same general character as those enumerated, and therefore that soda fountains were not included within the general term.
The amendment of 1903 included soda fountains, saloons, bathrooms, skating rinks, concerts, bicycle rinks, elevators, and ice-cream parlors.
In Baylies v. Curry (30 Ill. App. 105; affirmed, 128 Ill. 36), decided in 1889, a Negro woman, after being refused tickets at the box-office of Curry's Theater, had a white woman purchase two tickets for her in the balcony. Upon attempting to use them, the Negro woman and her husband were referred back to the box-office and their money returned. The proprietor introduced evidence to show that his theater was in a bad neighborhood, and he had, therefore, adopted the rule of reserving certain rows for Negroes in each section of the house. The supreme court, in affirming judgment for $100 damages, said: "Beyond all question, the Civil Rights Act prohibits the denial of access to the theater and to the several circles or grades of seats therein, because of race or color."
In 1903, in Grace v. Moseley (112 Ill. App. 100), it was held that the statute imposes liability only where the defendant denies or incites a denial of service, not where he merely fails to provide service.
The amendment of 1911 provided that there should not be any discrimination on account of race or color in the price charged for lots or graves in any cemetery.
Relying upon this provision, Gaskill, a Negro, applied for a writ of mandamus to compel the Forest Home Cemetery Company to receive the body of his wife for burial (People ex rel. Gaskill v. Forest Home Cemetery Company, 258 Ill. 36, 1913). The cemetery company had passed a resolution in 1907 that thereafter the cemetery would be maintained for the burial of white persons only—except that colored persons owning lots in the cemetery, and their direct heirs, should be admitted for burial. Gaskill did not own a lot in the cemetery, but four of his children had been buried there fifteen to twenty years before in single graves separated from each other; and when he applied in 1912 for space for the burial of his wife, the company refused permission solely on account of her color.
The court held that the 1911 amendment did not prohibit a cemetery corporation, which did not have the power of eminent domain under its charter and which had no monopoly of the burial places in its vicinity, from making and enforcing a rule excluding colored persons from burial in its cemetery. The case was taken on writ of error to the Supreme Court of the United States (238 U.S. 606), but the writ was dismissed for want of jurisdiction without further comment.
In Dean v. Chicago & Northwestern Railway Company (183 Ill. App. 317; 1913), Dean, a Negro, recovered damages of $300 from the railway company for its refusal to allow him to ride in a station elevator because of his color.[29]