Separate Street Cars the Latest—The “Higher Law” Likely to Cause Bloodshed – Other Plans to Erect a Wall Between the Races Everywhere.

New Orleans, La., June 9—Following up on her disfranchising the Negro some three years ago and her abolishing the grammar schools for colored people, the Louisiana legislature (lower house), passed last week the Wilson bill for separate cars which requires separate cars for whites and Negroes on all street car lines, makes it probable that the legislature will pass all the measures now before it aimed to carry out the Southern idea that the permanent settlement of the race question can be accomplished only by the complete and absolute separation of whites and Negroes at all times in all places.

The Wilson bill is the first state law passed on this point.  Nearly all the southern states have separated the whites and Negroes on the railroads, and some of the smaller southern cities have prohibited whites and Negroes from using the same street cars, but there is no state law to that effect save the new Louisiana act.

There has been no protest from the colored people against this legislation.  The legislature has of recent years passed a number of acts intended to carry this idea of separation—the Jim Crow Car Law, which separates the races in traveling; the law requiring the railroads to provide separate waiting rooms at all stations, the law prohibiting marriages between white persons and those with colored blood in their veins.  The Negro is already shut out of hotels, restaurants and all public places and but of the jury box of custom.

The Wilson bill is opposed by the street car companies, as it will increase their expenses greatly.  Another objection is that the law will lead to bloodshed in the consequence of the mistakes inevitable on the part of the conductors.

This danger is not imaginary.  The conductor who makes a mistake in diagnosing a dark white man as a Negro will take his life in his hands.  With the large population of dark-complectioned  West Indians, Syrians and Sicilians in this city the conductor will have hard work guessing which are white and which are Negroes, and if he guesses wrong, he must take the [potentially violent] consequences….

Yet…it is proposed to pass a law which punishes by fine and imprisonment the entrance or admission of Negroes to the white men’s [street] cars, and makes the street car companies and their employees responsible for any violation of the law.  If a dark man presents himself whose race or color is in doubt the conductor is placed in the disagreeable dilemma that if he objects to the man as a Negro he may be shot, and if he admits a passenger who proves to be a Negro, he will be fined, imprisoned and discharged.

Still more radical and equally likely to produce serious results is the Davis bill, now before the senate, which makes cohabitation between whites…a statute in the legislative law prohibiting marriages between the races…. These unions are now to be made criminal and will be formed with great risk and danger….

Still another separation is being urged by Louisiana papers—that the races be more completely separated in the theatres.  They are, of course, separated now as the Negroes are not allowed in any part of the theatre used by the whites, but are set apart in the upper galleries.  What is proposed is that the Negro be prohibited in white theatres altogether and that they have separate theatres of their own, just as they have separate hotels, restaurants, barber shops, schools, colleges, etc.

Thus, the wall is being built higher and stronger every day between the two races intended to keep them separate and apart in every act, in every condition of life.  The separation of the races is infinitely greater today than it was at any time in the history of slavery.  It is the southern plan of solving the race problem.

Source: The Guardian. Boston, MA, Saturday June, 14, 1902, pages 1-2.