few mulattoes are in evidence for the Negroes are nearly all of pure blood. One never hears of any serious trouble between the Negroes and whites of Cambridge for they live in comparative harmony with one another. At East New Market in the same county, a railroad separates the white from the Negro section of the town, while at Vienna, eleven miles distant, the Negro section is several hundred yards from the white part of the town.
Although Negroes constitute about one-third of the population of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, they have not become sufficiently numerous as farmers as to cause much injury to farm land or to farming interests, whether by careless and indifferent farming or by making the country districts undesirable to white people as places of residence. Most of the Negroes in the country districts are used by the white farmers as farm hands. Negroes are seldom able to rent the better grade farms while those owned by them are usually small and poor. As a consequence most of the land on the Eastern Shore is in a high state of cultivation and the farmers prosperous and contented.
In most parts of the farther South, however, except Texas and Oklahoma, and the Piedmont and mountain sections, the whites have allowed the
Negroes to gain such a foothold in the country districts that they are now the greatest obstacles to agricultural progress. The South is just beginning to realize the true condition of things.
Indeed, already in North Carolina an agitation has begun for the segregation of the Negro in the rural districts. If this could be accomplished in all parts of the South it would be a wonderful boon to that section. Not only would it to a great extent free the white women from fear of attack by Negroes but this would serve to attract to the South thrifty and ambitious farmers from other parts of the country. A more satisfactory social life could be developed in the rural districts. Adequate schools and churches could better be maintained, not only for the white race but for the Negroes as well. As a consequence both races would be benefited.
With the exception of the establishment in the South of separate schools for the whites and the Negroes, only in comparatively recent years has segregation been brought about by law. More than twenty years ago, however, a few Southern States had laws providing for segregation in railroad travel and now almost every Southern State has such a law. In some, Maryland for example, the law also applies to passenger steamboats. A certain section of the boat is given to the Negroes.
Both races have now become so accustomed to these laws that they are generally taken as a matter of course.
Lately many Southern cities have passed ordinances extending the principle of segregation in travel, to street cars. Mobile, Alabama, however, as early as 1902 had such an ordinance in force. As it was one of the first, and but slightly different from those in force in other cities, the main part is quoted here, as follows:
“All persons or corporations, operating street railroads in the city of Mobile or within its police jurisdiction shall provide seats for the white people and Negroes when there are white people and Negroes on the same car by requiring the conductor or other employe in charge of the car or cars to assign to passengers to seats in all the cars, or when the car is divided into two compartments in each compartment, in such manner as to separate the white people from the Negroes, by seating the white people in the front seats and the Negroes in the rear as they enter the car, but in the event such order of seating might cause inconvenience to those who are already properly seated, the conductor or other employee, in charge of the car, may use his discretion in seating passengers, but in such manner that no white person and Negro
must be placed, or seated, in the same section, or compartment arranged for two passengers: Provided, That Negro nurses having in charge white children, or sick or infirm white persons, may be assigned to seats among the white people.”[109:3]