Why Colored People in Philadelphia Are Excluded from the Street Cars

EXCLUDED FROM THE STREET CARS.

PHILADELPHIA: MERRIHEW & SON, PRINTERS, No. 243 Arch Street, below Third 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 procure for this class of people admission to these cars. This is incorrect. It will be found on inquiry, that a Committee, consisting of some twenty-five or thirty gentlemen, appointed at a public meeting, in January of last year, to effect, if possible, this object, is still in existence. This Committee is evidently somewhat slow. No report of its proceedings has yet been published, and the only reason suggested for its silence is, that there has been nothing good to report: an insufficient reason.

But these gentlemen have not been entirely idle. It seems that immediately on their appointment, they called on the respective Presidents of the nineteen street railway companies, and, in a courteous manner, requested them to withdraw from their list of running regulations the rule excluding colored people. Some few favored compliance, more or less conditional, the others not; but all, or nearly all, finally settled on the subterfuge of referring the question to 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 a car by the help of a policeman. The Committee called on the late Mayor Henry, 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 railway companies, and has not been judicially determined, the police assists in maintaining the rules of the companies, to prevent breaches of the peace." And he added: "I am not with you, gentlemen; I do not wish the ladies of my family to ride in the cars with colored people." It is proper to state here, that at the time of this interview, the latest three decisions of the Courts of the country, bearing on this question, had been directly against the right of exclusion,--the last being that of Judge Allison, of our Court of Quarter Sessions.

The Committee then turned to the Legislature. A bill to prevent exclusion from the cars on account of race or color had been introduced into, and passed by the Senate, early in the session of 1865, and was referred to the Passenger Railway Committee of the House. Here it was smothered. No persuasion could induce this Railway Committee,--twelve out of its fifteen members being Republicans, and eight Republicans from Philadelphia,--to report the bill to the House in any shape. According to the statement of the Chairman, Mr. Lee, the school-boy trick was resorted to of stealing it from his file, in order that it might be said that there was no such bill in the hands of the Committee. 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 within the last sixteen months, the Committee has attempted to bring suits for assault in seven different cases of ejection, all of which have been ignored by various grand juries,--the last only a few days ago. In one case, a white man,--a highly respectable physician,--who interposed, by remonstrance only, to prevent the ejection of a colored man, was himself ejected. He brought an action for assault, and his complaint was ignored also. In five of these cases civil actions for damages have been commenced, which are still pending. One of them, by appeal from a verdict, given under a charge of Judge Thompson, in Nisi Prius, against the ejected plaintiff, is now on its way to the Supreme Court in banc, where it is hoped the whole question will be finally and justly settled.

The colored people at present rarely make any attempt to enter the cars. As is their wont, they submit peaceably to what they must. The last case of ejection was that of a young woman, so light of color that she was mistaken for white, and invited into a car of the Union Line by its conductor. When he found she was colored, he ejected her with violence, and somewhat to her personal injury.

Thus stands this matter at present; and such has been the action of official bodies in it. Let us now see what has been the action of the unofficial public, and what spirit that public has manifested towards it indirectly, by its action on kindred matters. The claim of the colored people to enter the cars, though a local question, is inseparable from the great policy of Equality before the Law, now offering itself to the national acceptance; and any local fact which bears on the one relates also to the other, and is therefore relevant to this subject.

And first, it is found that even colored women, when ejected from the cars with insult and violence, seldom meet with sympathy from the casual white passengers, of either sex, who are present, while the conductor often finds active partisans among them. But one white passenger has ever volunteered testimony in any case; and for want of this, generally the only proof possible, several cases have been dropped.

Events early last year, such as the voting in the cars, the petition of the men working at the Navy Yard for continued exclusion of colored people on the Second and Third Street Line, the "fillibustering" of several hundred women, employed by the Government on army clothing, to defeat the Fifth and Sixth Street experiment of admission, and other acts of violence, show clearly that the classes represented by these men and women are bitterly opposed to admission.

Of our seven daily newspapers, two--the Press and _Bulletin_--have spoken out manfully and repeatedly in reproof of these outrages and in defence of the rights of the colored people. The others, it is believed, while admitting communications on both sides, have been editorially silent on the subject. In their local items, however, they have generally given a version of these disturbances unfavorable to the ejected colored people, under the heading of "riotous conduct of negroes," or some similar caption.

Grand juries, from the way in which their members are brought together, may be supposed fairly to represent the average public sentiment on this question, and their uniform action has been shown. Colored children have never been admitted to our general public schools, and the Associated Friends of the Freedmen in this city, who have lately adopted, as one of their cardinal rules, the admission of children of both colors, indiscriminately, to their schools in the South, consider that any effort to introduce the same rule here would be vain.

Only three members--Generals Owen, Tyndale, and Collis--of the Military Committee of Arrangements of sixteen, for the late celebration of the Fourth of July in this city, favored inviting colored troops to join in it; and the officers of the "California" Regiment (71st P. V.) gave notice, that if such troops did parade, their regiment must decline to do so, and would forward its colors to Harrisburg by express.

On the 30th of June last there were, distributed through sixteen counties of the State, and supported by State appropriations amounting in all to $525,000, twenty-nine School-Homes, three being in this city, containing 1837 orphans of white soldiers; and, according to the estimate of the Superintendent, by the 1st of December next, the number is expected to reach 3000. But, after careful inquiry, it does not appear that an orphan child of any one of the 1488 colored soldiers who lost their lives in the service, out of the 8681 belonging, according to official records, to Pennsylvania, and enlisted at Camp Wm. Penn, has yet found its way into any of these schools, or been provided for in any manner out of the above fund. You examine the Act, and find nothing there to exclude them from these privileges; you ask explanation of the school matrons, and are told that they never before heard the thing mentioned; and in reading the two annual reports of the Superintendent, Mr. Thomas H. Burrows, you find not a word implying knowledge of the fact that there was a single colored soldier enlisted in the State. Now on the 6th of July, 1863, at National Hall, the Hon. Wm. D. Kelley, a member of the late Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments, in presence of his colleagues and a large concourse of people, white and colored, asked, addressing his colored auditors: "Will you not spring to arms, and march to the higher destiny which awaits your race?" Then turning to his colleagues and their white friends, he asked: "Will you not see that their orphans are secured such educational opportunities as a great and humane commonwealth should provide for the orphans of patriots?" Both these appeals were answered by loud shouts of assent. And the men of color did "spring to arms," and marched--not exactly "to the higher destiny which awaits their race," for that seems to be rather a long march. They, however, kept their pledge; the country admits that. But, Men of the late Supervisory Committee, and the thousands whom you represented, how have you kept yours?

Again: at the corner of Sixteenth and Filbert Streets, in this city, there is a most comfortable Home for Disabled Soldiers. The State, thus far, has appropriated $5000 a year and the rent of the building to its support; the balance of its fund, $115,000, is chiefly the proceeds of a fair held last October at the Academy of Music for the benefit of disabled soldiers without regard to color. Colored disabled soldiers are of course admitted to this institution, as well as white, and both receive the same kind of fare. But the 160 white inmates eat, sleep, amuse themselves, and attend the four schools of different grades, under hired teachers, in well-aired and well-lighted rooms, distributed through the high main building, separate things, for them, being kept separate. The seven colored disabled soldiers (enlisted at Camp William Penn) are quartered in a frame appendage to this establishment, built on the pavement of the back yard, to which their privileges are mainly restricted; and here they receive gratuitous lessons from their benevolent volunteer teacher, Miss Biddle. There is still room in this Home for one hundred more white soldiers, but there are present accommodations for no more who are colored. An applicant, formerly of the 1st U. S. C. T., wounded in the hand, lately requested to be allowed quarters there for a day or two, until he could get work, and was told that the colored ward was full. Another colored soldier, his regiment not known, but who had lost an arm in the service, was also lately turned away for the same reason. To the inquiry whether it is absolutely necessary to make the distinction above noted, the prompt answer is, "Yes; for otherwise the white soldiers would make a row." But according to all testimony received, the white soldiers most cheerfully accorded the post of danger, during the late war, to the enlisted Blacks; and that the latter as cheerfully accepted and bravely maintained this post, many battle-fields--Fort Wagner, Port Hudson and Petersburg among the rest--testify. And it would seem that this fact might be used as an unanswerable reason for establishing equality of privilege in quarters where these soldiers meet in time of peace. The quarters being free of expense to all, those who might dislike the conditions could be made free to leave them. But it is found that this suggestion, when made, cannot be entertained for a moment.