The law of North Carolina probably contains a fatal defect in that it requires separation “as far as practicable.” Of course, this would allow the conductors or companies to make numberless exceptions. As a matter of fact, most of the North Carolina cities had been contemplating such a separation, and, when the law went into effect the first of April, 1907, were ready to regard and enforce it.
Enforcement of Laws
In practically all of the cities, the street-car conductors and motormen are special policemen to enforce the law. For the ejectment of a wilfully disobedient passenger, they incur no penalty either upon themselves or the company. North Carolina provides that the conductor shall not be liable if he makes the mistake of assigning a passenger to the wrong seat. In several of the cities, it is the duty of the regular police officers to arrest passengers whom they see riding in the wrong cars. The penalty upon the conductor for knowingly failing or refusing to enforce the law varies all the way from a minimum fine of one dollar in Montgomery, Alabama, to five hundred dollars in Jacksonville, Florida, or imprisonment from one to ninety days. The liability of the company is correspondingly heavy in proportion. Each trip made without providing for the requirements of the law is expressly declared a separate offence. In Pensacola, Florida, the fine upon the company for not furnishing separate accommodations is fifty dollars a day.
When a passenger consciously disobeys the law, he may be fined; and if he insists upon occupying the wrong seat, the conductor may eject him from the car. According to the Virginia law, “in case such passenger ejected shall have paid his fare upon said car, he shall not be entitled to any part of said fare.”
Exemptions
The only phase of these “Jim Crow” street-car laws which has given rise to any serious discussion is the question of the exemptions from application. Most of the States and cities simply except nurses of one race in attendance upon the children or sick of the other race, the nurse going into the car to which the child or sick person belongs. Of course, the street-car employees are excepted, and Virginia excepts officers in charge of prisoners and lunatics. But Florida and North Carolina declared that the law should not apply to colored nurses in attendance upon white children or white sick people; and Augusta, Georgia, has the same in its ordinance. The constitutionality of the Florida law was tested five years ago in the Supreme Court[[587]] of that State, and was declared to violate the Fourteenth Amendment, the court, in its opinion, saying: “It gives to the Caucasian mistress the right to have her child attended in the Caucasian department of the car by its African nurse, and withholds from the African mistress the equal right to have her child attended in the African department by its Caucasian nurse.” This is the same discrimination as to the invalid adult Caucasian attended by a colored nurse. As soon as the Florida State law was declared unconstitutional, the cities passed ordinances making the provision apply to nurses of either race. The North Carolina law was never tested, for it was amended before a test case reached the courts. The North Carolina legislature[[588]] of 1909 obviated all possible difficulty by amending its law to the effect that the nurses of the children or sick or infirm of one race might ride in the car set apart for the race of the infant or sick or infirm person so attended.
NOTES
[517]. Century Dictionary, I, p. 546.
[518]. Ibid., IV, p. 3233.
[519]. Laws of Fla., 1865, p. 24.