Georgia goes farthest in legislation on this point. In 1899, the legislature provided that, in assigning seats and berths on sleeping cars, white and colored passengers must be separated; but declared that nothing in the act should be construed to compel sleeping-car companies to carry persons of color in sleeping or parlor cars. The act does not apply to nurses and servants with their employers, who may enter and ride in the car with their employers. The conductors are made special policemen to enforce the law, and the failure or refusal to do so is punishable as a misdemeanor. The "Jim Crow" laws in Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia do not apply to Pullman cars or to through express trains; nor, in South Carolina, to through vestibule trains.
The Court of Appeals of Texas,[48] in 1897, held that a colored passenger in a Pullman car, going from a point outside of Texas into that State, might be compelled, upon reaching the Texas line, to enter a Pullman car set apart for passengers of his own race, provided the accommodations were equal. This decision is in harmony with those already considered with reference to day coaches.
Waiting-Rooms
Three States, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, require separate waiting-rooms at railroad depôts. In Mississippi, the railroad commission was given power in 1888 to designate separate waiting-rooms, if it deemed such proper. In most, if not all, of the other Southern States, separate waiting-rooms are provided by the railroad companies on their own initiative, and this action on their part was held constitutional[49] in South Carolina in 1893.
