The Tyler,Alabama depot on the Selma Division of the Western Railway of Alabama was built in 1891. It now serves as storage for a local cotton company, J.A. Minter & Sons, but was built with Jim Crow in mind. Credit: Andrew Waldo/Old Alabama Rails Collection

Railroads that would not ordinarily be considered "southern" also enforced segregation. In the early 1930s, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe put a Jim Crow coach (their terminology) on every Chicago-Los Angeles train, like the Scout, which followed its secondary passenger route through Amarillo, Texas, and Waynoka, Oklahoma. These were the only states on this route that had Jim Crow laws, but the Santa Fe designated the Jim Crow cars as originating in Los Angeles and Chicago, i.e., traveling nine-tenths of their distance in non-segregated states. The Southern Pacific likewise enforced segregation on its Los Angeles-New Orleans route. Black passengers remember with disgust that when the eastbound Sunset Limited arrived in El Paso, members of the Texas Rangers strode through the train to ensure that African Americans race moved from whatever coaches they had originally occupied into the single coach now designated for their race. Westbound travelers boarded Jim Crow cars everywhere in Louisiana and Texas, but once the train left El Paso they felt free to leave their assigned car and take seats elsewhere in the train.

Passenger volume declined after its World War II peak, with a surge in automobile travel and the beginning of airline competition. Running a full passenger train on many shorter routes or secondary lines, even for Class I railroads, was no longer economically viable. Motor cars, which had been used for several decades, maintained the practice of segregation. Still, on some branch lines, especially those which operated only mixed trains, ancient Jim Crow wood combines continued in use, like Louisville & Nashville car 665 which operated on a Kentucky branch up to 1952. But for many southern short lines, the postwar years brought hard times, with passenger service disappearing entirely and some lines abandoned entirely. That spelled the end of almost all the 19th-century-built wood-sided, truss-rod, open platform Jim Crow combines that were once commonplace throughout the South. Lucius Beebe’s Mixed Train Daily beautifully recorded them for posterity, but only five survive today.

In 1955, a year after the Brown decision outlawed segregated schools, the ICC ordered an end to segregated railroad cars and stations. But Jim Crow persisted, due to pressure from state governments determined to prevent desegregation of any public facilities, even though railroads wanted to abandon the practice as a burdensome expense. It was not until the end of the civil rights era in the late 1960s that blacks were finally able to travel with dignity throughout the South.

African Americans endured the humiliation and inconvenience of segregated railroad accommodations for a century and a quarter. Now Jim Crow is history, in two respects: The practice has thankfully disappeared; but it remains an important chapter in the history of American railroading. That it’s a disgraceful chapter is no reason to ignore it. In fact, Jim Crow is one of the central themes in the African American railroad heritage, a neglected story which needs to be told. One of the most dramatic ways to show how racism permeated the railroad industry is to display and interpret the surviving Jim Crow cars as Jim Crow cars. Some railroad museums have hesitated to do so for fear of offending black visitors. On the contrary, African Americans will be offended if museums neglect to tell the full history of American railroading, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

ENDNOTES

1. The term "Jim Crow" apparently had its origin during the early nineteenth century. Charles Earle Funke, in his Heavens to Betsy and Other Curious Sayings (New York: Harper & Row, 1955) states that a song entitled "Jim Crow" was copyrighted in 1828 by Thomas D. Rice and became part of a skit called "The Rifle." It was performed in Washington, D.C. in 1835 with Rice appearing in blackface. The term soon became an adjective meaning "for black persons only," and by the beginning of this century was in common usage. Throughout the South, segregation was enforced through legislation often referred to as "Jim Crow laws."

2. John H. White, Jr., The American Railroad Passenger Car (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 14-15, 203.

3. White, pp. 462-463.

4. Catherine A. Barnes, Journey From Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern Transit (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 2-4.

5. Barnes, pp. 5-10.

6. Barnes, pp. 1-2.

7. Ralph Ellison, "Boy on a Train," New Yorker, April 29 & May 6, 1996, pp. 110-111.

8. Joseph M. Welsh, By Streamliner: New York to Florida (Andover, N.J., Andover Junction Publications, 1994).

9. James Kemper Millard, Chesapeake and Ohio Streamliners: Second to None; Volume I: The Cars (Clifton Forge, Va., The Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Society, 1994).