Page:Race distinctions in American Law (IA racedistinctions00stepiala).pdf/371

 words, any two races have lived together in this country in anything like equal numbers, race distinctions have been recognized in the law sooner or later; and, before becoming legally recognized, have existed in practice.

RACE DISTINCTIONS NOT DECREASING

Race distinctions do not appear to be decreasing. On the contrary, distinctions heretofore existing only in custom tend to crystallize into law. As a matter of fact, most of the distinctions which are described above as the "Black Laws of 1865-68" are no longer in force. No State now carries statutes prescribing the hour when a Negro laborer must arise, requiring his contracts to be in writing, prohibiting him from leaving the plantation or receiving visitors without his employer's consent, or exacting a license fee of him before he can engage in certain trades. These laws were vestiges of the slave system and survived but a short time after that system had been abolished. Likewise, those statutes which prohibited Negroes from testifying in court against white persons were repealed during the first few years after Emancipation. But distinctions which are not the direct results of slavery have found an increasing recognition in the law. Thus, though Florida, Mississippi, and Texas had separate railroad coaches for freedmen in 1866, the regular "Jim Crow" laws did not begin to creep into the statutes of the Southern States till 1881. Now every Southern State, except Missouri, has a law separating the races in railroad cars. Mississippi, in 1888, was the first State to require separate waiting-rooms. Louisiana, in 1902, took the lead in compelling separate street car accommodations,