CHAPTER IX
SEPARATION OF RACES IN PUBLIC CONVEYANCES
There is perhaps no phase of the American race problem
which has been discussed so much within the last decade
as the so-called "Jim Crow" laws, the statutes requiring
separate accommodations for white and colored
passengers in public conveyances. This arises largely from
the fact that these legislative enactments are of general
concern, while the other legal distinctions have directly
affected only certain classes of each race. Laws prohibiting
intermarriage, for instance, concern only those of marriageable
age; suffrage restrictions apply only to males of
voting age; and statutes requiring separate schools affect
immediately only children and youths; but the laws requiring
white and colored passengers to occupy separate seats,
compartments, or coaches concern every man, woman, and
child, who travels, the country over. They affect not only
those living in the States where the laws are in force, but
the entire traveling public. The white man or the Negro
in Massachusetts may not care anything about the suffrage
restrictions of South Carolina, but, if he travels through
the South, he must experience the requirements of the
"Jim Crow" laws.
