of the South, for instance, provide separate dining tables, separate toilet rooms, and separate smoking rooms for the white and colored passengers. This regulation of interstate travel is upheld by two Federal cases, one in Georgia[26] in 1879 and the other in Maryland[27] in 1885, which held in substance, that, inasmuch as Congress has enacted no law which forbids interstate common carriers from separating white and colored passengers so long as the accommodations are equal, during congressional inaction, the companies may make their own regulations.
SEPARATION OF PASSENGERS IN RAILROAD CARS
With the exception of the transient "Jim Crow" laws of Mississippi, Florida, and Texas of 1865-67, the first State to adopt a comprehensive law separating the white and colored passengers on railroad cars was Tennessee[28] which did so in 1881. The statute of that State stood alone until 1887, when a series of "Jim Crow" laws were enacted by the States in the following order: Florida,[29] 1887; Mississippi,[30] 1888; Texas,[31] 1889; Louisiana,[32] 1890; Alabama,[33] Kentucky,[34] Arkansas,[35] and Georgia,[36] 1891. For some years thereafter the subject remained untouched by the legislatures, save an amending statute now and then; but in 1898-99, the other Southern States began to fall into line: South Carolina,[37] 1898; North Carolina,[38] 1899; Virginia,[39] 1900; Maryland,[40] 1904; Oklahoma,[41] 1907. It appears that Missouri is the only Southern State which has not separated the races in railroad cars.
The details of the "Jim Crow" laws as to railroads
