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says Lester A. Walton, "is on the wane in Mississippi. Blatancy has given way to temperate expression. Intolerance is being supplanted by tolerance. Vardamanism, symbolical of racial unrest, is on its last legs and has lost potency.

"When Henry L. Whitfield became Governor of Mississippi in January, the event marked the dawn of a new era in race relationships in a commonwealth where the blacks outnumber the whites. Whitfieldism is the antithesis of Vardamanism. Instead of fomenting racial friction by making rabid anti-Negro speeches, Governor Whitfield and his followers are bending their efforts toward unifying the two races for their common good.

"Mississippi's new chief executive clearly defined his attitude on race relations in his inaugural address when he said: "The Negroes still make up slightly more than one-half of Mississippi's population. Any plans for a new era, any change in our economic life, any reorganization of our agriculture or industry which leaves them out, is doomed to failure. There is a definite relation between their happiness and prosperity and that of the State as a whole.

"If we would hold these laborers in the South, we must compete with the Northern employer on his own terms. We must improve working and living conditions, look after the Negro's health, foster manual training and modern agricultural methods, and see to it that at all times the less-favored black man shall get a square deal in business relations and in the courts. Our own self-interest prompts it; humanitarian considerations demand it; our Christian duty as a more favored people enjoins this upon us.'" 5

The recent great industrial rebound in the South, the rapid strides she has recently made in education, sanitation, good roads, and other internal matters, have been due to the new type of leader.

In several Southern states the Negro vote is still so large that any great division among the white people would result in political disaster such as happened to North Carolina in 1897 when the Negro vote elected Governor Russell and a populist legislature. But in spite of this danger, the white people are able to vote rather independently on national issues, and the fear of Negro control is sufficiently removed to allow the attention of the white people to be concentrated on local conditions and to induce a higher type of white people to take the lead in politics. *Outlook, Apr. 9, 1924.

CHAPTER 14

REGULATION OF NON-POLITICAL RIGHTS

Separation of the Races on Railway Trains and Street Cars-Impracticability of Street Car Separation in Large Cities—The Problem of the Sleeping Car— Negroes Have Their Own Hotels, Restaurants, Theaters, and So Forth

ΤΗ

HE laws of the several Southern states require separation of the races in public schools. Excepting Missouri, they also require separation in railroad cars, and excepting Missouri, Maryland, and Kentucky, they require separation in street cars. The general policy in the South is to separate the Negroes from the whites in all public places where their commingling might give rise to disorder or prove a source of embarrassment to either race, and custom often sanctions separation in cases where the law is silent.

The Negroes raise no objection to the separate schools, and do not altogether object to separation in other respects, provided they are furnished accommodations equal to those for the whites. In the matter of railway transportation the Negroes complain very loudly because they are obliged to submit to inferior accommodations. In most cases, however, their complaint is more a matter of habit and of infection from the Negro press of the North, which characterizes all racial separation as "jim-crowism," than from actual inconveniences suffered. Any intelligent observer who has traveled extensively through the South is obliged to notice that in most instances, so far as the day coaches are concerned, the Negroes ride in more comfort than the whites. They occupy a part of the same coach and generally have much more room. In traveling over the main lines of the South, I have made it a point to observe the apartments occupied by the colored people, and I have rarely seen them as much crowded as those of the whites. The accommodations for colored people are, however, often very inferior on branch lines where the day coaches for both white and colored passengers are old and dilapidated. The trains on these lines are generally made up of two coaches, the forward one being inferior and divided into a smoking apartment for the whites and an apartment for the colored people. While the apartment for the colored people is rarely over

crowded, it is difficult to keep clean on account of the miscellaneous classes of colored people who occupy it, and respectable Negroes, especially educated and self-respecting Negro women, often feel outraged to have to endure the disagreeable surroundings. The railroads ought to be required to furnish on these lines as good coaches for the Negroes as for the whites. The practical difficulty from the standpoint of the railroad company is that the company can find no economic disposition of old coaches except to use them on the branch lines. I have often thought that the railway policy in vogue prior to the era of the legal separation of the races on trains was a better one than that of the present. Then the railroads sold first and second-class tickets, and the result was a practical separation of the races. The white people bought first-class tickets and the colored people the second-class tickets. I recall very distinctly that very few colored people ever rode in the firstclass coaches, and these few were generally well-behaved mulattoes whose presence was hardly noticed by the whites. I also recall that white men who desired to smoke rode in the second-class coach with the Negroes. In those days, however, race prejudice was not so strong as it is now.

When the main railway lines began to put on fast and high-class trains, stopping only at large cities, it was not to the interest of the railroads to attach second-class coaches. The slower trains then carried a larger proportion of Negroes and the white people began to complain of their presence. Often the rowdyism of the Negroes in the second-class coaches was unbearable to the whites.

The state railway commissioners in the South should either require as good cars for Negroes as for the whites or compel the roads to sell tickets to the Negroes at a second-class rate.

In spite of all the discomfort endured by the Negroes in the railway coaches, Maurice Evans, as a result of his travels in the South, says, "Take it all through, I found that the whites were more frequently incommoded by the distinction than the colored." 1

1

The Negro author James D. Corrothers, in relating his experience on railways in the South, says:

"Some separate cars, especially those on the Norfolk & Western road, are as clean and commodious as the coaches reserved for white people. Even a smoking room is provided. But too frequently the separate Negro compartments are without water, poorly ventilated, small and dirty. Coloured men and women are often required to use 'Black and White in the Southern States, p. 143.

the same toilet-rooms; and white men, passing through the Negro car, frequently light their cigars and smoke in the presence of coloured women. Usually only half a baggage car is partitioned off for the use of coloured passengers; and over two or three seats of that the train's newsboy will audaciously spread his magazines, papers, and candy, and then sit down on half a seat himself, though coloured passengers are compelled to stand. The conductor will coolly occupy two or three additional seats, checking up his accounts, unperturbed by the discomfort of his passengers. More than once I have stood up while conductors sat, and more than once I have ridden weary miles without one drop of water. There was plenty of drinking water on the train, but none in the Negro compartment. Once a kind conductor allowed me to go into the white people's car to get a drink.

"White people, however, are not entirely to blame for the bringing about of these conditions in the South. Rowdy Negroes often board the trains, full of bad liquor, and bent upon a fight. They sit down and drink more whiskey, lurch through the car, insult respectable coloured women and men, and make themselves not only nuisances but positively dangerous, lurching and obscenely cursing, with pistol or knife in hand. It is no wonder that white Southern legislators have sought by prohibitive laws to protect their own men and women from such disgusting and dangerous displays of black savagery as this. Nevertheless, it is manifestly unfair to compel decent and intelligent coloured people to be herded in a car with such creatures, unprotected, without human accommodations, and insulted by every ruffian on the train, whether white or black, simply because their faces are dark.” 2

The most difficult problem in connection with racial separation in transportation is that of providing Pullman accommodations fairly for each race. Negroes are not allowed to ride in a Pullman car occupied by white people, and so few Negroes would ride in such a car, were it provided, that no railroad feels justified in putting one on for the Negroes. The result is that Negroes making long journeys, even if able to afford a berth in a Pullman car, have to sit up all night and nod in a day coach. Booker Washington used to solve the problem for himself by reserving the drawing room of a Pullman car. He would thus separate himself from the white people, but would pay dearly for his night's lodging.

There are a number of well-to-do and educated Negro men and women who would gladly pay for a berth in a Pullman car and their "Corrothers, In Spite of the Handicap, p. 121.

number will increase from year to year; and while it may be a long time before their number would justify the railroads in hauling on any train a Pullman car for colored people, the time has already arrived when something should be attempted in the direction of more comfortable night travel for the colored people. It seems to me that on some trains between large cities, on which there is considerable Negro travel, a coach or compartment of a coach might be fitted up with berths somewhat like the tourist sleepers on Western roads, so that any Negro who was willing to pay the price could have a comfortable night's rest.

The separation of the races in transportation is hard to bring about with absolute justice to the Negro, but it seems to be nevertheless a necessary policy. This is the view taken of it by a Northern man, Ray Stannard Baker. He says:

"As for the Jim Crow Laws in the South, many of them, at least, are at present necessary to avoid the danger of clashes between the ignorant of both races. They are the inevitable scaffolding of progress." 3

The same view of the matter is taken by an Englishman, William Archer. In his Through Afro-America is this statement:

"Well, that day in the black belt of Mississippi brought home to me the necessity of the Jim Crow car. The name-the contemptuous, insulting name is an outrage. The thing on the other hand, I regard as inevitable. There are some negroes (so-called) with whom I should esteem it a privilege to travel and many others whose companionship would be in no way unwelcome to me, but, frankly, I do not want to spend a whole summer day in the Mississippi Valley cheek by jowl with a miscellaneous multitude of the negro race."

"4

The separation of the races on street cars is impracticable in large cities. While the space allowed to each race is designated by a sign which can be moved from one seat to another, the number of seats required by the Negroes on some cars varies from none to all on a single run, so that all of the time of the conductor is taken up in adjusting the sign. For instance, in the city of Memphis I have taken a car at the Union Station which was full of white people; when the car passed beyond the business district two-thirds of the passengers were Negroes, because the car passed through a Negro section; a mile or two farther on the passengers were again only white people. In that city, as also in St. Louis, Baltimore, and Louisville, there are cars on which a Negro is rarely seen and others on which their number varies greatly 'Following the Color Line, p. 305.

'P. 70.

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