the right of municipal corporations, under legislative authority, to assess, levy, and collect taxes to aid in the construction of railroads."[10] Jurists in this country and in England had also held that inasmuch as the innkeeper is engaged in a quasi public employment, the law gives him special privileges and he is charged with certain duties and responsibilities to the public. The public nature of his employment would then forbid him from discriminating against any person asking admission, on account of the race or color of that person.[11] In the _Slaughter House Cases_[12] and _Strauder_ v. _West Virginia_[13] the United States Supreme Court held that since slavery was the moving or principal cause of the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, and since that institution rested wholly upon the inferiority, as a race, of those held in bondage, their freedom necessarily involved immunity from, and protection against all discrimination against them, because of their race in respect of such civil rights as belong to freemen of other races. Congress, therefore, under its present express power to enforce that amendment by appropriate legislation, might enact laws to protect that people against deprivation, _because of their race_, of any civil rights granted to other freemen in the same States; and such legislation may be of a direct and primary character, operating upon States, their officers and agents, and also upon, at least, such individuals and corporations as exercise public functions and wield power and authority under the State. The State was conceded the power to regulate rates, fares of passengers and freight, and upon these grounds it might regulate the entire management of railroads in matters affecting the convenience and safety of the public, such as regulating speed, compelling stops of prescribed length at stations and prohibiting discriminations and favoritisms. The position taken here is that these corporations are actual agents of the State and what the State permits them to do is an act of the State. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments made the Negro race a part of the public and entitled to share in the control and use of public utilities. Any restriction in the use of these utilities would deprive the race of its liberty; for "personal liberty consists," says Blackstone, "in the power of locomotion of changing situation, of removing one's person to whatever places one's own inclination may direct, without restraint, unless by due course of law."