A Word about the Street Cars

Both white and black people are burdened by the Jim Crow streetcar system because of more arrests.

A Word about the Street Cars
The “Jim Crow” Street car law continues to be a source of annoyance and irritation to both white and colored passengers. The latest phase of the iniquitous measure was shown in the arrest of Mr. J. Wesley Jones by Street-car Conductor Robert Davis. Mr. Jones was in the active service of the Unites States government. He wore the mail-carrier’s uniform and carried the mail bag with the mail therein at the time he was arrested.
Despite all of this, Conductor Davis delayed the mail by having Jones arrested because he refused to move from one seat to another, although he was sitting in the seat provided by the company for white and colored passengers. The Conductor and his counsel have since attempted to show that he was arrested for disorderly conduct, but the “sum and substance” of this disorderly conduct was his expression of indignation at the action of the Conductor in attempting to prevent his securing a resting place upon one of the seats specified by the rules of the company.
The case was so frivolous that the charge against Mail-carrier Jones was dismissed in the Police Court. The amusing part of the case was the declaration of Conductor Davis that he had not been discharged by the company and the declaration of Attorney A. B. Guigon that he had been discharged and the order posted. It seems though that upon a closer examination of the facts, he was restrained...

“A Word about the Street Cars,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed April 24, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/452.