I was just reading an article awhile ago on how railroads such as the PRR and C&O had to segregate both their passengers and employees when running trains into the south during the mid 20th century. I'm curious to know how much that all affected the social makeup and environment of railroad companies let alone passenger relations. When the Civil Rights Act was passed in 65 how exactly did southern operations such as the Southern and SAL appreciate it? I can only imagine there must've been some outrage from management but I could be completely wrong. Perhaps some of RYPN's southern members could shed some light into this topic.

Cameron

The co-called Jim Crow laws were passed by state legislatures and signed by state governors, making them state laws that the railroads had to comply with. I am not real sure that railroad management was "outraged" nor "pleased" with any aspect of it. I am not sure it really mattered to railroad management, they were just abiding by the law. How could you ever know? Maybe one of them kept a diary that is now public?

As an aside...I like to look at old real photo post cards for sale on Ebay and especially like the ones showing train crews. I have seen a number of mixed-race crews in photos dating to pre-WW II. I am not sure what that proves but it is a bit of anecdotal evidence. Also note that white Casey Jones had an African-American fireman...so the IC was not too concerned.

T7

Hi,

Just my opinion.

I have seen a photograph of a track gang working on standard gauging the Gainesville Midland Railroad in 1914. The foreman was white and there were 5-8 colored people posing with him in the photo.

If I recall correctly, the rails had already been moved to SG width. The narrow gauge ties were still in place between the SG ties. It has a plank road with a sort of curb (rails) look to it. I'll see if I still have a copy of it.

As for other railroads, I think having four toilets per car for some cars would have been a cost savings issue. I've seen plans somewhere that show the white section with larger toilets separate (mens and womens) toilets, and the smaller but equal mens and womens in the colored section. Rebuilding them into two seaters and even one seater's would be a blessing (I would think) for the maintanence crews and allowing larger loads (another bench seat or two).

Other than being rebuilt for better use, I would not think management would have much opinion about the issue unless the person holding the position rabidly held personal opinions about propriety.

If the separate but equal idea had one whole coach for whites and one whole coach for blacks then I do not see any difference.

DOug vV

I thought states had no controll over the railroad as it was interstate comerse.

While it may be an entirely different branch of racial stratification concerning railroads, there was definitely a "glass ceiling" limiting how far African Americans could rise in major railroad administrations. I remember IC as being one of the first, if not the first, to break through that policy.

In 1950 my mother got a drink of water from a fountain in a Greyhound bus station somewhere in the South. Then she discovered she was drinking from the "colored" fountain, and was shocked that anybody could be so concerned about something so trivial. As a northern-born white woman, she quickly discovered that she had to be careful about such things as long as she was in the South. A black person in the same position had to be much more concerned because the consequences could be severe and violent. All bus and railroad stations had duplicate facilities, and I suppose airports must have had them too. This must have had a massive cumulative effect on the cost of building and maintaining those facilities, but the railroads didn't seem to object, probably because white public opinion in the South was evidently unanimously in favor of Jim Crow laws and practices. To fight that tide would have been counterproductive in Management's view. I don't know what was done about onboard restrooms on buses, but not all buses had them in the first place. White bus patrons sat in front; nonwhites sat in back. On trains, separation was maintained as much as possible. Coach passengers were separated in separate cars or separate sections of cars. I don't know about separation of sleeping car patrons within an individual sleeping car. In dining cars, I understand one or two tables would be set aside for nonwhites.

When it comes to employment, some crafts were closed to nonwhites. In many States, I understand an engineer and Conductor would always be white because those crafts were closed to nonwhites. So it should be no surprise that Sim Webb, Casey Jones' fireman, was of African descent. I understand these restrictions didn't start to be relaxed until the 1950's. I suspect the performance of nonwhite troops in WWII, plus the integration of the Army in the Truman years, may have been as influential as anything until about 1954, when the Supreme court ruled against school segregation, thus opening the way for additional progress towards integration of all public accommodations. It would be naive to suggest that this quick 2-paragraph entry could even begin to tell the story.

Tom

Hi,

I was born in 1955, so I can only add what Mom said about it. She was born in Harrisburg, PA. Mom and Dad (part Chinese and part Dutch/Netherlands) moved from Harrisbutg in 1955, I was born there. My first birthday was in Jackson Mississippi.

Mom always said that a black person who needed a ride would just flag down any car (Most often white) and the white person would take the black anywhere they needed to go in the city.

Mom always said that in the South, the whites hated the race but loved the person. She said that the she trusted our black maid to take care of my sister and I better that a strange white person.

She also said that in the North (without segregation), they loved the race and hated the individual when it came to blacks. She said of resturants that had reserved signs on all the table so if someone came in they did not want, they would say that the had been reserved. A little subtler but segregation - sort of.

One born in the south white woman told Mom and Dad that the only thing left for the whites to do in the South (when segregation started) was to try to make sure the blacks had a good education so they could take care of themselves.

The station floor plans for Southern Railway I have show small depots having four waiting rooms. Some are only two.

For what its worth.

Doug vV

Harriet Tubman in her autobiography mentions that segregation on the State owned South Carolina Railroad & Canal Company's Charleston & Hamburg Rwy. didn't start until the line passed into private hands. The taxpayers weren't about to pay for duplicate facilities themselves. Probably back them, most Negroes on a train would be slaves accompanying their owners, and not many freemen riding alone.
The fireman on the "Best Friend" of Charleston when it exploded on June 17, 1831 was Negro.
As for segregation on airplanes, these links include advise to Government employees to use Eastern Airlines instead of railroad trains to avoid segregation in 1947:

http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb4 ... calisphere

http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb4 ... nk.id=meta

The Interstate Commerce Laws did not apply to racial segregation. Railroads that operated in states with racial segregation laws had special Jim Crow cars or coaches that had separate compartments for the two races.

State liquor laws also applied to railroads. They could not sell or serve liquor while the train was in a dry state or if the state prohibited liquor sales on Sunday that law applied to railroads. This led to some interesting times in lounge cars as drinks were sold or not sold depending on location of train.

Airlines were exempted by Federal Law from state liquor laws while in the air.

Also, for those who could afford to eat in the dining car, they were served before or after the white passengers. Some dining cars were equipped with a single table that was separated from the rest of the dining room by a partition. If the table was used for colored patrons, a curtain would be hung to separate them from the main dining room.

Certain crafts were closed to non-whites and non-whites could not join unions. In some cases, union agreements prohibited the use of non-white employees on certain divisions. On the Southern Railway, black firemen were not used north of Knoxville per union agreement.

Overall, desegregation had little measurable impact on passenger operations as it came about at the very end of private passenger operations. Many railroads simply retired the Jim Crow coaches. The few that remained in service generally only lost the partitions and signs. Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum has examples of both-Central of Georgia Railway coaches 906 and 907. 906 is a heavyweight coach that was retired and retained it's partition. 907 remained in service and lost the partition but retained the dual toilet compartments.

The intent of Jim Crow, since the southerners could no longer legally own blacks, was to "own" them mentally, by not admitting that they had any intelligence, initiative, or reasoning ability at all. Therefore, blacks were barred from any job that required making decisions. Now, we may think of the fireman's job as having great responsibility, but for purposes of the law, the fireman was considered to work directly under the supervision of the engineer, who was ultimately responsible for the safe operation of the boiler.

I can remember at least one reference (but not which one) that explicitly stated that a black fireman could not pass signals to the engineer. That would require relying on the black to properly interpret the signal he was relaying, something the political establishment of the time was not prepared to do.

The men in my family were all from the Deep South but all had gone into the military at some point in their lives. All my uncles (most of them were in WW2) told me that the only difference between the South and the North in regard to race relations was that the South passed specific laws. The North, one uncle told me, did pretty much the same thing but not as officially. Makes sense, as I'd always wondered how the ET&WNC had a black fireman at one point, long before Jim Crow laws were done...
That said, I don't think the RR dealt with Jim Crow laws on their passenger trains as their coaches didn't have any different compartments. Mind you, not many blacks lived up in those, "Hollers" as my parents who grew up there never even saw a 'person of color' until their teens, I think. There's still not a huge Africa-American community in the area that I'm aware of.

Yes.

The LIRR famously had segregated waiting rooms at its Wainscott, NY depot in the early 1900s. This wasn't required by law of course (because New York had no such law), but was actually requested by passengers, specifically wealthy summer residents who didn't want to have to mingle with migrant farm workers.

I'm curious if anyone knows of other examples of this kind of "voluntary" segregation of railroad facilities in the North.

-Philip Marshall

From the reading that I have done on the subject, that seems to have been the attitude that many railroads unofficially adopted. Unless they absolutely had to, they preferred to ignore the Jim Crow statutes. Generally speaking, the further north and east one went, the less stringent the enforcement of segregation was.



Incidentally, the first state to pass a segregation law was the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (in 1853). The statute was very quickly withdrawn due to pressure from the public (and undoubtedly railroad companies).



Indeed. Some legislatures were so determined to keep the colored people "in their place" that they passed statutes prohibiting recruiters from hiring colored laborers to work in the northern states. There was at least one case where agents representing the Pennsylvania Railroad were arrested for violating such a statute.

Hi,

I recall riding on the Southern Cresent between 1971 (Amtrak) and the end of Southern's passenger operations (1979) I ate in the diners and many if not all had the glass partition around two booths. Never wondered why. Thanks for the insight.

As an aside, it is strange where racism shows up. Jim Crow and the south is the most commonly thought of. In the Movie War Wagon with John Wayne, and Indian walks into the saloon and orders. The barman says something like we don't serve your kind in here.

On a personal note, my Dad was born in 1920 on Java in the Dutch East Indies. His father was dutch and his mother was part dutch and part chinese. The only racism the ever occurred to Mom or Dad was when Dad first arrived in Harrisburg in the winter or autumn (1947?) and found a room at a rooming house up near the Reading Railroad and 17th(?) street bridge. He went to work and came back that evening. The owner of the house had packed up Dad's bags and put them out on the porch and would not refund the first week's rent. He just told something along the lines of Dad looked funny and did not want him in his house.

Dad's country had been occupied by Germany and Japan in WWII and his family was in Japanese concentration camps during WWII. He fought shoulder to shoulder with the Americans in the Pacific (even once under MacAuther's personnel orders).

I never could understand the why of dumb actions.

Oh well.

It is interesting when trying to understand an era to get bits of slightly off topic items that may help understand (but not excuse) of the actions of an era.

Doug vV