In 1876 a Negro in Louisiana bought a ticket to a theatre, which he was not allowed to use on account of his color. He sued for five thousand dollars damages. The Constitution of that State, at the time, guaranteed equal accommodations in public places. The Louisiana court[72] held that this law "does not enumerate a mere abstraction, but it guarantees substantial rights." The Negro's claim was sustained, but the damages were reduced to three hundred dollars and costs. Both this and the Mississippi case arose in the South and were decided favorably to the rights of the Negro, but both came during the Reconstruction régime. Since then, no such case appears to have risen in the South.
In 1889 a Negro woman in Illinois, having been refused tickets to a theatre, had a white man buy them for herself and her husband. On presenting the tickets they were refused admission to seats in the theatre which the tickets called for. At the resulting trial, the proprietor offered to prove that he had, "in order to avoid collision between the races, adopted a rule (and that such rule was necessary) to the effect that the colored people should have one row to themselves in each part of the house, or as many rows as the tickets which they bought would call for." This evidence was rejected, the court[73] holding that the Civil Rights Bill of Illinois could not be satisfied by separate accommodations.
Missouri has no Civil Rights Bill. A Negro, mistaken for a white man by the clerk in the box-office, bought tickets for seats in the orchestra of a Kansas City theatre. When he presented his tickets to the usher he was refused the seats called for, but was offered in exchange balcony
