WHY COLORED PEOPLE
IN
PHILADELPHIA
ARE
EXCLUDED FROM THE STREET CARS.
PHILADELPHIA:
MERRIHEW & SON, PRINTERS,
No. 243 Arch Street, belowThird St.
1866.
THE COLORED PEOPLE AND THE CARS.
Some remarks lately communicated to the New York Anti-Slavery Standard,on the continued exclusion of colored people from our street cars,leave the impression that no efforts have been made here to procurefor this class of people admission to these cars. This is incorrect.It will be found on inquiry, that a Committee, consisting of sometwenty-five or thirty gentlemen, appointed at a public meeting, inJanuary of last year, to effect, if possible, this object, is stillin existence. This Committee is evidently somewhat slow. No report ofits proceedings has yet been published, and the only reason suggestedfor its silence is, that there has been nothing good to report: aninsufficient reason.
But these gentlemen have not been entirely idle. It seems thatimmediately on their appointment, they called on the respectivePresidents of the nineteen street railway companies, and, in acourteous manner, requested them to withdraw from their list of runningregulations the rule excluding colored people. Some few favoredcompliance, more or less conditional, the others not; but all, ornearly all, finally settled on the subterfuge of referring the questionto a car-vote of their passengers. The subterfuge answered its purpose,for the self-respecting part of the community did not vote.
Shortly after this vote was taken, a colored man was ejected from acar by the help of a policeman. The Committee called on the late MayorHenry, and respectfully inquired if this had been done by his order.His reply was: "Not by my order, but with my knowledge and approbation;as the right to exclude colored people has been claimed by the railwaycompanies, and has not been judicially determined, the police assistsin maintaining the rules of the companies, to prevent breaches of thepeace." And he added: "I am not with you, gentlemen; I do not wish[Pg 4] theladies of my family to ride in the cars with colored people." It isproper to state here, that at the time of this interview, the latestthree decisions of the Courts of the country, bearing on this question,had been directly against the right of exclusion,—the last being thatof Judge Allison, of our Court of Quarter Sessions.
The Committee then turned to the Legislature. A bill to preventexclusion from the cars on account of race or color had been introducedinto, and passed by the Senate, early in the session of 1865, and wasreferred to the Passenger Railway Committee of the House. Here it wassmothered. No persuasion could induce this Railway Committee,—twelveout of its fifteen members being Republicans, and eight Republicansfrom Philadelphia,—to report the bill to the House in any shape.According to the statement of the Chairman, Mr. Lee, the school-boytrick was resorted to of stealing it from his file, in order thatit might be said that there was no such bill in the hands of theCommittee. This assertion was made to an inquirer, several times over,by Mr. Freeborn, one of its members.
Finally, recourse was had to the Courts. Funds were raised, and withinthe last sixteen months, the Committee has attempted to bring s