belongs. Of course, the street-car employees are excepted, and Virginia excepts officers in charge of prisoners and lunatics. But Florida and North Carolina declared that the law should not apply to colored nurses in attendance upon white children or white sick people; and Augusta, Georgia, has the same in its ordinance. The constitutionality of the Florida law was tested five years ago in the Supreme Court[71] of that State, and was declared to violate the Fourteenth Amendment, the court, in its opinion, saying: "It gives to the Caucasian mistress the right to have her child attended in the Caucasian department of the car by its African nurse, and withholds from the African mistress the equal right to have her child attended in the African department by its Caucasian nurse." This is the same discrimination as to the invalid adult Caucasian attended by a colored nurse. As soon as the Florida State law was declared unconstitutional, the cities passed ordinances making the provision apply to nurses of either race. The North Carolina law was never tested, for it was amended before a test case reached the courts. The North Carolina legislature[72] of 1909 obviated all possible difficulty by amending its law to the effect that the nurses of the children or sick or infirm of one race might ride in the car set apart for the race of the infant or sick or infirm person so attended.
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