Missouri has no Civil Rights Bill. A Negro, mistaken for a white man by the clerk in the box-office, bought tickets for seats in the orchestra of a Kansas City theatre. When he presented his tickets to the usher he was refused the seats called for, but was offered in exchange balcony seats reserved for Negroes. The court[[287]] before which the case was tried held that the rule of the theatre requiring separate accommodations for the races was not a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The most recent case[[288]] appears to be a 1905 case in New York in which a Negro was ejected from a theatre by an employee. The proprietor was permitted to show that the ejectment was done while he was away and contrary to his orders, and that he permitted Negroes to enjoy the privileges of the place. A verdict was thereupon found for him, but the case was remanded by the appellate court for a new trial, on the ground that the evidence was improperly admitted.
SKATING RINKS
California, Illinois, and Massachusetts have considered skating rinks of enough importance to include them in their Civil Rights Bills. In 1885 the keeper of a skating rink in Iowa refused to let a Negro use it, and the Negro brought suit. The court[[289]] held that the exclusion of a colored man from a skating rink not licensed is not illegal. The New York court[[290]] has held that a skating rink is a “place of public amusement” within the meaning of the statute, so that a keeper of one cannot refuse admission to a Negro.
CEMETERIES
The early Civil Rights Bills of New York, Florida, and Kansas prohibited race distinctions in public cemeteries. This stipulation, however, does not appear in the present statutes of any of the States, except Kansas. Race distinctions in cemeteries are common. The legislature of Mississippi[[291]] of 1900, for instance, gave the Ladies’ Auxiliary Cemetery Association, an organization of white women, permission to remove the monument and remains of the Negro State Secretary of State, James Lynch, from the white to the Negro cemetery in Jackson, Mississippi, provided it was done without expense to the State.
The Raleigh, N. C., News and Observer of February 20, 1906, quotes the Germantown, Pa., Guide as calling on the people to provide a cemetery where Negroes may be buried, saying that “unless something is done, the bodies of the colored poor will be denied the right of decent burial, for their disposal, of necessity, will be by means of the dissecting rooms of anatomical boards.”
The Civil Rights Bills of the eighteen States have now been analyzed, and the judicial decisions arising therefrom have been considered. It is noticeable that, if one excepts the theatre cases of the Reconstruction period, not a case has come from a Southern State. The explanation must be that those States have never undertaken to require hotel-keepers, etc., to offer accommodations without regard to color: the Negroes have taken for granted that they would not be admitted to such places, except upon condition that they would accept the accommodations set apart for their race, and consequently have not applied for admission upon any other terms. In the other States the courts have, as a rule, interpreted the Civil Rights Bills very strictly. If a place is not specifically mentioned in the statute, courts have been very slow to include it under the general head of “other places of amusement or accommodation.” In other words, this phrase, which is, in substance, tacked on to every statute, is a dead letter. The courts are chary, as they should be, of invading individual liberty and freedom of business. But if a place is specifically mentioned in the statute, the law is not satisfied by offering separate accommodations to Negroes, even though such accommodations are equal for both races in every respect; they must be identical.
RACE DISCRIMINATION BY INSURANCE COMPANIES
Some allied topics may be properly discussed under the general head of civil rights.