The Southern States, as a rule, require a separation by race of inmates of State charitable and penal institutions, and where it is not provided for by statute, it is done as a matter of custom. Alabama,[[315]] for instance, makes it unlawful for any jailer or sheriff, having charge of white and colored prisoners before conviction, to imprison them permanently together in the same apartments of the jail or other places of safe-keeping, if there are enough separate apartments. It is also unlawful[[316]] for white and colored convicts to be chained together, allowed to sleep together, or confined in the same room or apartment when not at work.
The legislature of Arkansas[[317]] passed a statute in 1903, directing that in the State penitentiary and in all county jails, stockades, convict camps, and all other places where prisoners are confined, separate apartments should be provided and maintained for white and Negro prisoners. Separate bunks, beds, bedding, dining tables, and other furnishings were required, and after they had once been assigned to a prisoner of one race they must not be changed to the use of one of the other race. White prisoners must not be handcuffed or otherwise chained or tied to a Negro prisoner.
Georgia[[318]] does not allow prison-keepers, or firms leasing or controlling convicts, to confine white and colored convicts together, or to work them chained together, or to chain them together in going to and from their work or at any other time. Mississippi[[319]] provides that no discrimination shall be made on account of race, color, or previous condition, in working convicts. This does not mean that they shall not be separated, as they are in Georgia, but is simply a prohibition against discrimination in the quality of work assigned to the two races. At the last session of the legislature of North Carolina,[[320]] a bill was passed providing for the separation of white and colored prisoners in the State penitentiary and in the State and county convict camps during sleeping and eating hours.
That a separation of the two races exists in the jails of Washington City is evidenced by a protest issued a year or so ago by the National Equal Rights Council of that city, a Negro organization, against the separation of the white and colored prisoners in the jails of the city. There was no allegation, however, that the cells were not equal in accommodation, the objection being raised solely at the principle of separation.[[321]]
As to reformatories, Georgia[[322]] provides that they shall be so constructed as to keep white and colored inmates separate. West Virginia[[323]] requires that the white and colored inmates of its reform school for boys shall be kept separate, and the inmates of its industrial home for girls (also a reformatory) shall be separate as far as practicable.
As to paupers, Alabama[[324]] authorizes the county commissioners of Washington County to keep separate accommodations for the maintenance of white and colored paupers.
Not many States have statutes which say in so many words that lunatics, and that the deaf, mute, and blind shall be kept separated according to race; but one finds appropriations for colored asylums and schools, etc., and one is justified in concluding that, where a colored asylum or school is built, the colored persons are not allowed in the other asylums and schools of the State. Alabama,[[325]] for instance, has a school for the Negro deaf and blind at Talladega, under the control and management of the board of trustees of the white school for the deaf, and makes an annual appropriation for the support of the school. Arkansas[[326]] also provides that applicants to the deaf-mute asylums shall be received without restriction on account of race or color, but does not forbid their separation by race within the asylum. Tennessee,[[327]] as early as 1866, provided that there should be separate asylums for the colored blind, deaf and dumb, and lunatics, and the trustees of these institutions were given power to prepare buildings for colored insane, “so as to keep them secure and safe, and yet separate and apart from the white patients.” In 1881, that State[[328]] appropriated $25,000 to provide accommodations for the colored blind at Nashville, and the same amount for the colored deaf and dumb at Knoxville. Kentucky[[329]] likewise provided in 1876 that white and colored lunatics should not be kept in the same building. New York[[330]] has on many occasions made appropriations for asylums for colored children, thus leaving the impression that such children are not admitted to the white asylums. North Carolina[[331]] maintains separate asylums for its white and colored insane. And Georgia[[332]] requires the asylums of the State to provide apartments for the insane Negro residents of the State. Indiana,[[333]] in 1879, made an appropriation to associations formed for the purpose of maintaining an asylum for colored orphan children. The West Virginia[[334]] asylum for insane must have separate wards for white and colored patients.
NOTES
[214]. Bouvier’s “Law Dictionary,” I, p. 331.
[215]. 14 Stat. L. 27, chap. 31.