The first case to reach the Supreme Court of the United States involving the separation of white and colored passengers on cars was one brought against the Washington, Alexandria, and Georgetown Railroad Company, in 1873. This road was chartered by Congress in 1863 with the provision that no person should be excluded from the cars on account of color. A Negro woman, with an ordinary first-class ticket, was made to ride in a separate coach precisely like that used by the white passengers. The court ruled[534] that the Act of 1863 meant that persons of color should travel in the same cars as white persons without any distinction being made; that, therefore, the law was not satisfied by the company’s providing cars assigned exclusively to persons of color, though they were as good as those assigned to white passengers. In 1869, the Louisiana[535] legislature passed a law prohibiting railroad, street car, and steamboat companies from making any discrimination on account of race or color. In the often-cited case of Hall v. DeCuir,[536] a test case arising under this act in 1875, the Supreme Court ruled that the Louisiana act was unconstitutional because it was an interference with interstate commerce. Chief Justice Waite, in delivering the opinion of the court, said: “If each State was at liberty to regulate the conduct of carriers while within its jurisdiction, the confusion likely to follow could not but be productive of great inconvenience and unnecessary hardship.” This case has stood as a warning to the Southern States that they must be careful to mention in their “Jim Crow” laws that they apply only to intrastate passengers. But, as will be seen later, though this case has not been overruled, it has been refined upon. In a case[537] arising in the Federal District Court of Texas in 1877, it was held that for a railroad employee to deny to a passenger the right to ride in the only car appropriated for the use of ladies, because she was a colored woman, was a violation of the Civil Rights Bill. But the judge, in charging the jury at the trial, said that, if there were two cars equally fit and appropriate, then the white and colored passengers might be separated. The above are only a few of the many cases which arose between 1865 and 1881, involving the separation of white and colored passengers; they are cited to show that, in the absence of legislative authority, many of the public conveyance companies had regulations of their own separating the races. The “Jim Crow” laws, in other words, coming later, did scarcely more than to legalize an existing and widespread custom. SEPARATION OF PASSENGERS ON STEAMBOATS