Page:Race distinctions in American Law (IA racedistinctions00stepiala).pdf/151

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appellate division thereby sustaining the county court, saying: "A bootblacking stand may be said to be a place of public accommodation, like the store of a dry goods merchant, a grocer, or the proverbial 'butcher, baker, and candlestick maker'; but that is very far from placing it in the same category with the places specifically named in the statute. Inns, hotels, and public conveyances are places of public accommodation in the broadest sense, because they have always been denominated as such under the common law. Bath-houses and barber-shops are not to be regarded as included within the statute under the general phrase, 'and all other places of public accommodation.' There is no more relation between a bootblacking stand and a public conveyance than there is between a theatre or music-hall and a bath-house or barber-shop. There is, it is true, a superficial resemblance between the occupation of the barber and that of the bootblack, in the sense that both minister to the personal comfort and convenience of others; but the same argument could be extended far beyond the limits necessary to demonstrate that not 'all other places of public accommodation' are included by relation within the category of the things specifically enumerated in the statute."


BILLIARD-ROOMS

In Massachusetts in 1866, a certain Negro was refused, because of his race or color, the use of a billiard-room. At that time a statute of the Commonwealth required equal accommodation in public places of amusement. The Supreme Court[62] of Massachusetts, in which the Negro's case was finally heard, held that there was no proof that the