The law of Alabama of 1891 contained the provision that “this act shall not apply to cases where white or colored passengers enter this State upon such railroads under contract for their transportation made in other States where like laws to this do not prevail.” Since these laws, however, have become so prevalent throughout the South, the courts seem to have swung over to the side of public opinion. In 1889, the Supreme Court of Mississippi held[[559]] that though the “Jim Crow” law of that State applied only to intrastate travel, it was not an unwarranted burden upon interstate railroads to require them to furnish separate accommodations for the races as soon as they came across the State line.
In 1894, the “Jim Crow” law of Kentucky was declared unconstitutional by the Federal Circuit Court[[560]] because the language of the acts was so comprehensive as to embrace all passengers, whether their passage commenced or ended within the State or otherwise and thus interfered with interstate commerce. Four years later, however, the Court of Appeals[[561]] of Kentucky, considering the same statute, ruled that the law of that State was not in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment or the “interstate commerce clause” of the Federal Constitution, arguing that, if it did apply to interstate passengers, which was not conceded, it would be construed to apply only to transportation within the State. Under this latter ruling apparently the colored passenger going from West Virginia to Indiana through Kentucky would have to ride in the car provided for his race in that State.
The same year, 1898, the Supreme Court[[562]] of Tennessee held that it was a proper exercise of the police power to require even interstate passengers to occupy separate accommodations while in that State. The last case[[563]] upon this point, decided April 16, 1907, held that a railroad company may, independently of statute, adopt and enforce rules requiring colored passengers, although they are interstate passengers, to occupy separate coaches or compartments.
Thus the matter stands. In the absence of a recent United States Supreme Court decision upon the point, it would be unsafe to make a generalization. But it is clear that there has been, in the point of view of the Federal judiciary, a reaction from the extreme doctrine of Hall v. DeCuir. All the lower courts, both State and Federal, are inclined to make the laws apply to all passengers, both intrastate and interstate, so long as they are within the borders of the particular State.
Sleeping Cars
In a number of the “Jim Crow” laws there are special provisions about Pullman cars. Oklahoma and Texas provide that carriers may haul sleeping or chair cars for the exclusive use of either race separately, but not jointly. Georgia goes farthest in legislation on this point. In 1899, the legislature provided that, in assigning seats and berths on sleeping cars, white and colored passengers must be separated; but declared that nothing in the act should be construed to compel sleeping-car companies to carry persons of color in sleeping or parlor cars. The act does not apply to nurses and servants with their employers, who may enter and ride in the car with their employers. The conductors are made special policemen to enforce the law, and the failure or refusal to do so is punishable as a misdemeanor. The “Jim Crow” laws in Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia do not apply to Pullman cars or to through express trains; nor, in South Carolina, to through vestibule trains.
The Court of Appeals of Texas,[[564]] in 1897, held that a colored passenger in a Pullman car, going from a point outside of Texas into that State, might be compelled, upon reaching the Texas line, to enter a Pullman car set apart for passengers of his own race, provided the accommodations were equal. This decision is in harmony with those already considered with reference to day coaches.
Waiting-Rooms
Three States, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, require separate waiting-rooms at railroad depôts. In Mississippi, the railroad commission was given power in 1888 to designate separate waiting-rooms, if it deemed such proper. In most, if not all, of the other Southern States, separate waiting-rooms are provided by the railroad companies on their own initiative, and this action on their part was held constitutional[[565]] in South Carolina in 1893.
The most recent legislation along this line was an act of South Carolina of February 23, 1906, requiring a separation of the races in all station restaurants and eating-houses, imposing a heavy fine for its violation. It is probable that the necessity or propriety of this law was suggested by the disturbance which arose at Hamlet, North Carolina, near the South Carolina line, when the proprietor of the Seaboard Air Line Railway eating-house at that place allowed a party of Negroes, one of whom was Dr. Booker T. Washington, to eat in the main dining room, while the white guests were fed in a side room.