The Separation of the Races in Public Conveyances

There is perhaps no phase of the American race problem which has been discussed quite so much within the last decade as the Jim Crow laws; that is, the statutes requiring separate accommodations for white and colored passengers in public conveyances. This has been the case largely because these legislative enactments are of general concern, while the other legal distinctions have directly affected only certain classes of either race. For instance, the laws prohibiting intermarriage concern only those of marriageable age; the suffrage qualifications apply only to males of voting age: the statutes requiring separate schools immediately affect only children and youths. But the laws requiring white and colored passengers to occupy separate seats of compartments or coaches concern every man, woman, and child, who travels, the country over. They affect not only those living in the States where the laws are in force, but the entire traveling public. The white man or the colored man in Massachusetts may not care anything about the suffrage restrictions of South Carolina, but, if he travels through the South, he must experience the requirements of the Jim Crow laws.Inasmuch, then, as these statutes are of such general concern, it is proper that the people should know where they are, what they are, and the means of their execution. It is not the purpose of this article to take sides and discuss the justice or injustice of the laws, or the partiality or the impartiality of their execution, but rather to examine the provisions of the laws, and, so far as may be, to summarize the court decisions upon the different sections of the laws.