On February 9, 1900, the Virginia[23] legislature enacted a statute requiring the separation of white and colored passengers on all steamboats carrying passengers and plying in the waters within the jurisdiction of the State in the sitting, sleeping, and eating apartments, so far as the "construction of the boat and due consideration for comfort of passengers" would permit. There must be no difference in the quality of accommodations. The law makes an exception of nurses and other attendants traveling with their employers, and officers in charge of prisoners. For disobeying the law, the boat officer is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not less than twenty-five dollars nor more than one hundred dollars. Any passenger wilfully disobeying the law is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not less than five dollars nor more than fifty dollars or by imprisonment for not less than thirty days, or both. The boat officer may eject an offending passenger at any landing place, and neither he nor the steamboat company will be liable. In 1901, the above law[24] was made more stringent by omitting the provision about the construction of the boat and consideration for the comfort of the passengers, quoted above. In 1904, South Carolina[25] required all ferries to have separate cabins for white and colored passengers.
The above legislation seems to be the only legislation as to steamboats up to the present; but it does not measure the separation of the races on steamboats, inasmuch as the companies in the various States have adopted regulations requiring separate accommodations for the races. This custom applies to interstate as well as to intrastate travel. The steamers plying between Boston and the ports
