The Jim Crow-Car and its Handicaps.
May 18, 1907
Summary
In Alabama, white people do not want just segregated seats but want entirely separate trains for black and white people.
Transcription
The Jim Crow-Car and its Handicaps.
[From American Magazine for May]
Montgomery, Ala., about the same time, went one step further and demanded, not separate seats in the same car, but entirely separate cars for whites and blacks. There could be no better visible evidence of the increasing separation of the races, and of the determination of the white man to make the Negro “keep his place,” than the evolution of the Jim Crow regulations.
I was curious to see how the system worked out in Atlanta. Over the door of each car, I found this sign:
“White People Will Seat from Front of Car toward the Back, and Colored People from Rear toward Front.”
Sure enough, I found the white people in front and the Negroes behind. As the sign indicates, there is no definite line of division between the white seats and the black seats, as in many other Southern cities. This very absence of a clear demarcation is significant of many relationships in the South. The color line is drawn, but neither race knows just where it is. Indeed, it can hardly be definitely drawn in many relationships, because it is constantly changing.
This uncertainty is a fertile source of friction and bitterness. The very first time I was on a car in Atlanta, I saw the conductor-all conductors are white-ask a Negro woman to get up and take a seat further back in order to make a place for a white man. I traveled a good deal, but I never saw a white person asked to vacate a back seat to make place for a Negro. I saw cars filled with white people, both front seats and back, and many Negroes standing.
At one time, when I was on a car the conductor shouted: “Hers, you nigger, get back there,” which the Negro, who had taken a seat too far forward, proceeded hastily to do. Of course, I am taking here of conditions as they are in Atlanta. I may find different circumstances in other cities, which I hope to develop when the time comes.
No other one point of race contact is so much and so bitterly discussed among the Negroes as the Jim Crow car. I don’t know how many Negroes replied to my question: “What is the chief cause of friction down here?” with a complaint of their treatment on street cars and in railroad trains.
…
Continued page 8
A Negro Boycott
Of course this was an unusually intelligent colored man, and he spoke for his own sort; how far the same feeling of a race consciousness strong enough to carry out such a boycott as this-and it is exactly like the boycott of a labor union -actuates the masses of ignorant Negroes, is a question upon which I hope to get more light as I Proceed. I have already heard more than one colored leader complain that Negroes do not stand together. And a white planter, whom I met in the hotel, said a significant thing along this very line:
“If once the Negroes got together and saved their money, they’d soon own the country, but they can’t do it, and they never will.”
After I had begun to trace the color line. I found evidences of it everywhere -literally in every department of life. In the theaters, Negroes never sit downstairs, but the galleries are black with them. Of course, white hotels and restaurants are entirely batted to Negroes with the result that colored people have their own eating and sleeping places, most of them inexpressibly dilapidated and unclean. “Sleepers wanted” is a familiar sign in Atlanta, giving notice of places where for a few cents a Negro can find a bed or a mattress on the floor, often in a room where there are many other sleepers, sometimes both men and women in the same room crowded together in a manner both unsanitary and immoral.
No good public accommodations exist for the educated or well-to-do Negro. Indeed, one cannot long remain in the South without being impressed with the extreme difficulties which beset the exceptional colored man.
In slavery time, many Negroes attended white churches and heard good preaching, and Negro children were often taught by white women. Now, a Negro is never (or very rarely) seen in a white man’s church. Once since I have been in the South, I saw a very old Negro woman—some much-loved mammy, perhaps—sitting down in front near the pulpit but that is the only exception to the rule that has come to my attention.
Negroes are not wanted in white churches. Consequently, the colored people, who are nothing if not religious, have some sixty churches of their own in Atlanta. Of course, the schools are separate, and have been ever since the Civil War.
[From American Magazine for May]
Montgomery, Ala., about the same time, went one step further and demanded, not separate seats in the same car, but entirely separate cars for whites and blacks. There could be no better visible evidence of the increasing separation of the races, and of the determination of the white man to make the Negro “keep his place,” than the evolution of the Jim Crow regulations.
I was curious to see how the system worked out in Atlanta. Over the door of each car, I found this sign:
“White People Will Seat from Front of Car toward the Back, and Colored People from Rear toward Front.”
Sure enough, I found the white people in front and the Negroes behind. As the sign indicates, there is no definite line of division between the white seats and the black seats, as in many other Southern cities. This very absence of a clear demarcation is significant of many relationships in the South. The color line is drawn, but neither race knows just where it is. Indeed, it can hardly be definitely drawn in many relationships, because it is constantly changing.
This uncertainty is a fertile source of friction and bitterness. The very first time I was on a car in Atlanta, I saw the conductor-all conductors are white-ask a Negro woman to get up and take a seat further back in order to make a place for a white man. I traveled a good deal, but I never saw a white person asked to vacate a back seat to make place for a Negro. I saw cars filled with white people, both front seats and back, and many Negroes standing.
At one time, when I was on a car the conductor shouted: “Hers, you nigger, get back there,” which the Negro, who had taken a seat too far forward, proceeded hastily to do. Of course, I am taking here of conditions as they are in Atlanta. I may find different circumstances in other cities, which I hope to develop when the time comes.
No other one point of race contact is so much and so bitterly discussed among the Negroes as the Jim Crow car. I don’t know how many Negroes replied to my question: “What is the chief cause of friction down here?” with a complaint of their treatment on street cars and in railroad trains.
…
Continued page 8
A Negro Boycott
Of course this was an unusually intelligent colored man, and he spoke for his own sort; how far the same feeling of a race consciousness strong enough to carry out such a boycott as this-and it is exactly like the boycott of a labor union -actuates the masses of ignorant Negroes, is a question upon which I hope to get more light as I Proceed. I have already heard more than one colored leader complain that Negroes do not stand together. And a white planter, whom I met in the hotel, said a significant thing along this very line:
“If once the Negroes got together and saved their money, they’d soon own the country, but they can’t do it, and they never will.”
After I had begun to trace the color line. I found evidences of it everywhere -literally in every department of life. In the theaters, Negroes never sit downstairs, but the galleries are black with them. Of course, white hotels and restaurants are entirely batted to Negroes with the result that colored people have their own eating and sleeping places, most of them inexpressibly dilapidated and unclean. “Sleepers wanted” is a familiar sign in Atlanta, giving notice of places where for a few cents a Negro can find a bed or a mattress on the floor, often in a room where there are many other sleepers, sometimes both men and women in the same room crowded together in a manner both unsanitary and immoral.
No good public accommodations exist for the educated or well-to-do Negro. Indeed, one cannot long remain in the South without being impressed with the extreme difficulties which beset the exceptional colored man.
In slavery time, many Negroes attended white churches and heard good preaching, and Negro children were often taught by white women. Now, a Negro is never (or very rarely) seen in a white man’s church. Once since I have been in the South, I saw a very old Negro woman—some much-loved mammy, perhaps—sitting down in front near the pulpit but that is the only exception to the rule that has come to my attention.
Negroes are not wanted in white churches. Consequently, the colored people, who are nothing if not religious, have some sixty churches of their own in Atlanta. Of course, the schools are separate, and have been ever since the Civil War.
About this article
Source
Location on Page
Upper Right Quadrant
Topic
Contributed By
Benton Camper
Citation
“The Jim Crow-Car and its Handicaps.,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed February 19, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/496.