The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 could have been maintained on the ground
that it regulated interstate passenger traffic, as one of the cases,
_Robinson and Wife_ v. _Memphis and Charleston Railroad Company_,
showed that Robinson a citizen of Mississippi had purchased a ticket
entitling him to be carried from Grand Junction, Tennessee, to
Lynchburg, Virginia. This case substantially presented the question of
interstate commerce but the court reserved the question whether
Congress in the exercise of its power to regulate commerce among the
several States, might or might not pass a law regulating rights in
public conveyances passing from one State to another. The court
undertook to hide behind the fact that this specific act did not
recite therein that it was enacted in pursuance of the power of
Congress to regulate commerce. Justice Harlan, therefore, inquired:
"Has it ever been held that the judiciary should overturn a statute,
because the legislative department did not accurately recite therein
the particular provision of the constitution authorizing its
enactment?" On the whole, the contrary is the rule. It is sufficient
to know that there is authority in the Constitution.
In this decision, too, there was the influence of the much paraded
bugbear of social equality forced upon the whites. To use the inns,
hotels, and parks, established by authority of the government and the
places of amusement authorized as the necessary stimulus to progress,
to buy a railroad ticket at the same window, ride in the same
comfortable car on a limited train rather than incur the loss of time
and suffer the inconvenience of inferior accommodations on a slow
local train; to sleep and eat in a Pullman car so as to be refreshed
for business on arriving at the end of a long journey, all of this was
and is today dubbed by the reactionary courts social equality. Justice
Harlan exposed this fallacy in saying: "The right, for instance, of a
colored citizen to use the accommodations of a public highway, upon
the same terms as are permitted to white citizens, is no more a social
right than his right, under the law, to use the public streets of a
city or a town, or a turnpike road, or a public market, or a post
office, or his right to sit in a public building with others, of
whatever race, for the purpose of hearing the political questions of
the day discussed."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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