Integration on the Rails

Segregation of Negro interstate railroad and bus passengers must be ended, effective Jan. 10, the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled last week.

From that day forth, Negroes who pay for the same interstate accommodation as whites must get the same accommodation as whites; they must also be permitted to use the same railroad waiting rooms and washrooms as whites. Said the ICC: "The disadvantage to a traveler who is assigned accommodations or facilities so designated as to imply his inherent inferiority solely because of his race must be regarded under present conditions as unreasonable. Also, he is entitled to be free of annoyances, some petty and some substantial, which almost inevitably accompany segregation, even though the rail carriers . . . sincerely try to provide both races with equally convenient and comfortable cars and waiting rooms."

"Peace & Order." The ICC handed down its ruling in two specific decisions, upholding the complaint of various Negro passengers against 13 Southern railroads and a bus company. At issue in a broader sense was the Southern doctrine of "separate but equal" facilities for the races.

Although many Southerners and Northerners assume that Jim Crow has been around forever, the "separate but equal" doctrine is relatively new. Before and during the Civil War, there was no legal segregation of passengers in the Southern slave states. The first Jim Crow transportation law was not written in the U.S. until 1875 (in Tennessee).

"It is a great deal pleasanter to travel with respectable and well-behaved colored people," said the Charleston, S.C. News and Courier in 1885, "than with unmannerly and ruffianly white men." The doctrine of separate but equal spread outward from the western states of the South, however, until it gained the approval of the Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, in 1896.

In its lengthy finding last week, the ICC outlined how its decisions had consistently reflected the thinking of the Supreme Court and the trend of the country. The ICC had noted soon after its inception in 1887 that in Washington, the capital city, "white and colored children are educated in separate schools. Congress votes public moneys to separate charities . . . Trades unions . . . maintain and march in separate organizations." Accordingly, the ICC defined its 1887 segregation policy for railroads to "aim at a result most likely to conduce to peace and order and to preserve the self-respect and dignity of citizenship of a common country." Coming up to 1955, the ICC last week quoted the recent rulings of the Supreme Court against segregation on interstate railroad sleeping and dining cars, in the public schools, parks and playgrounds.

"Self-Respect & Dignity." "It is hardly open to question that much progress in improved race relations has been made," said the ICC, "and that more can be expected . . . We are therefore now free to place greater emphasis on steps 'to preserve the self-respect and dignity of citizenship of a common country,' which this commission in 1887 balanced against 'peace and order.' "

The ICC ordered that the Southern rail and bus companies be "required to cease and desist, on or before Jan. 10, 1956, and thereafter to abstain from practicing the undue and unreasonable prejudice and disadvantage found to exist."

Railroad and bus companies have a right to test the ICC ruling in the federal courts. After the Jan. 10 deadline, individual Negroes or the ICC may bring suits demanding compliance with the order. It may take years, in some cases, for appeals to reach the U.S. Supreme Court; but there is little doubt that the ICC and the courts are moving in the same direction.

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