Page:Race distinctions in American Law (IA racedistinctions00stepiala).pdf/227

 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.