Breaking the Jim Crow Law

From the Feb. 1, 1907, Nashville Globe

We have noticed that there is a disposition on the part of some of the white people to disregard the separate street car law which was enacted by the state legislature and known as the “Jim Crow Street Car Law.” The object of this law, as we understand it, is to separate the colored and white passengers on all street cars operated in the state. The law went into effect on July 5, 1905, and with but few exceptions there has been a general acceptance of the law by Negroes. We have noticed that white people are not law abiding in this direction.

The text of the law reads about as follows: “White passengers boarding the car are to seat from the front to the rear. Colored passengers boarding the car will seat from the rear to the front.” This appears, and would be interpreted, that a white passenger boarding a street car should take the seat farthest front, the next passenger the next seat, and so on, each seat, being filled toward the rear; the colored passengers vise versa.

The colored passengers always obey this law, but white passengers boarding street cars sit anywhere except where they belong. We have noticed cars coming in with not more than a dozen white passengers, one on each seat, while fifteen or twenty colored passengers would be crowded in the back of the car, some of them occupying the two lengthwise seats, with plenty of empty seats in the front of the car. Some of the conductors have attempted to carry out the law. They have on several occasions ordered white passengers to the front, but as a general rule no attention is paid to the transgressors of the law if they perchance belong to the white race. The attention of the officials of the state, as well as of the street car company, is hereby called to these conditions. We hope they will be remedied ere the summer returns. Some of our people are forced to ride on the cars: their work demands it, and in order to give their time to their employers they must report on time, which cannot be done when they live great distances, unless they use the cars.

There are hundreds of Negroes in Nashville who have never “bowed their knees to Baal!” (the Jim Crow Law), but these cannot be classed as law-breakers. They would, we believe, carry out the law to the letter if they were forced to ride on the cars. The enforcing of legislative acts, so far as concerns our people, appears very rigid; but on the other hand the only violations noted are when something extremely sensational occurs, as was the case when a white man in a buggy with seeming deliberation ran down an aged colored woman on Third avenue, North, some time ago.

(Tennessee State Library and Archives)

Editor’s note: This article appeared in the February 2013 issue of The Nashville Retrospect, which features other stories from the city’s past, including: “Military Plane Crashes In Donelson” (1956), “Girl Soldier” (1863), and “Everybody Ought To Try Chitlins” (1964).