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The First Segregation Law of Jim Crow Texas

In 1891, the Texas Legislature passed a law requiring all railroads operating in the state to provide separate seating for White and Black passengers. Rail companies could comply either by designating certain passenger cars “Whites Only,” or by building wooden partitions within rail cars, separating the races.

While the law claimed to mandate “equal” accommodations, the reality was starkly different. In practice, Black passengers were often subjected to inferior, poorly maintained cars and denied access to amenities available in White sections of the train. Nonetheless, the appearance of formal legal symmetry allowed the state to assert that the law was fair.

This law, and others like it, rolled back the civil rights victories that Blacks had won during the Reconstruction era (1865-1870s), restricting liberties and codifying a system of racial castes.

Though no longer slaves, Black Texans (called “colored” or “negro” at the time) were, in effect, second-class citizens. They were relegated mostly to servile professions, discriminated against in the education and criminal justice systems, and given access to low-quality public services—or none at all. Blacks also suffered occasionally from mob violence, lynchings, and police brutality.

Overall, this discriminatory system—which was both legal, social, and economic—was known as “Jim Crow.” (For a broader history see, Segregation in Texas: Understanding the Jim Crow Era).

Segregation laws—and laws governing the institution of slavery—had existed in Texas from the 1830s until the 1860s. But formal laws requiring the separation of races were repealed during the federal military occupation of Texas, a period known as Congressional Reconstruction. (However, a ban on interracial marriage remained in place continuously from 1837 until 1967).

The 1870s to 1880s then witnessed a period of greater racial equality, at least de jure.

Despite this, “Segregation as a matter of custom, sometimes enforced by violence, continued without the sanction of law and occasionally in the face of contrary law during those two decades,” according to Michael Ariens, a law professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas, and an expert on the legal history of Texas. “Many whites believed no [Black] freedman was his social equal. Consequently, law or no law, segregation in railroad car seating was a customary norm that was disobeyed at the peril of the freedman.”1

Starting in the 1890s, Texan politicians took steps to codify the existing discriminatory norms and roll back the civil rights victories of the Reconstruction era.

The Separate Coaches Act of 18912 was the first real segregation law of the “Jim Crow” era in Texas—apart from local ordinances, a long-standing ban on interracial marriage, and an 1889 law that “authorized and empowered” railroads to segregate seating, but did not require it.

The 22nd Legislature passed the law on March 19, 1891, as Senate Bill 97, with an amendment added by a second act of April 11, 1891.3 These two acts appears in Sayles’ Annotated Civil Statutes of the State of Texas (1897), codified as Articles 4509–4516.

The amendment provided an exception for colored “nurses” traveling in the company of an employer (or members of the employer’s household). The term “nurse” in this context referred not to medical professionals, but to domestic servants—typically Black women—performing caregiving or service duties, such as nannies to White children, or caregivers for the elderly. By inserting an exception for personal service, the statute undermined the totalizing nature of Jim Crow segregation. The law enforced racial division—but not at the expense of White comfort.

RAILROADS—SEPARATE COACHES REQUIRED

Senate Bill No. 97. An act to require railroad companies in this State to provide separate coaches for white and negro passengers, and to prohibit passengers from riding in coaches other than those set apart for their race, and to confer certain powers upon conductors and to provide penalties for the violation of this act.

Section 1. Every railroad company, lessee, manager or receiver thereof, doing business in this state as common carriers of passengers for hire, shall provide separate coaches for the accommodation of white and negro passengers, which separate coaches shall be equal in all points of comfort and convenience.

Section 2. The term negro as used herein includes every person of African descent as defined by the statutes of this state.

Section 3. Each compartment of a coach divided by a good and substantial wooden partition with a door therein shall be deemed a separate coach within the meaning of this law, and each separate coach shall bear in some conspicuous place appropriate words in plain letters indicating the race for which it is set apart.

Section 4. Any railroad company, lessee, manager or receiver thereof which shall fail to provide its trains, carrying passengers, with separate coaches as above provided for, shall be liable for each and every such failure to a penalty not less than one hundred nor more than one thousand dollars, to be recovered by suit in the name of the state in any court of competent jurisdiction. And each trip run with any such train without such separate coaches shall be deemed a separate offense.

Section 5. If any passenger upon a train provided with separate coaches shall ride in any coach not designated for his race, after having been forbidden to do so by the conductor in charge of the train, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined not les than five nor more than twenty-five dollars.

Section 6. The provisions of this act shall not be so construed as to prohibit nurses from traveling in the same coach with employers or employes upon the train in ascharge of their duties; nor shall it be construed to apply to such freight trains as may carry passengers in cabooses, neither shall it apply to street railway cars; provided, that nothing herein contained shall be construed to prevent railroad companies in this state from hauling sleeping cars or chair cars attached to their trains to be used exclusively by either white or negro passengers separately but not jointly.

Section 7. Every railroad company carrying passengers in this state shall keep this law posted in a conspicuous place in each passenger depot, and in each passenger coach, provided for in this chapter.

Section 8. The provisions of this chapter shall not apply to any excursion train run strictly as such for the benefit of either race.

Section 9. Conductors of passenger trains provided with separate coaches shall have the authority to refuse any passenger admittance to any coach in which he is not entitled to ride under the provisions of this chapter; and the conductor in charge of the train shall have the authority, and it shall be his duty to remove from a coach any passenger not entitled to a ride therein under the provisions of this chapter. And upon his failure or refusal to do so he shall be punished as provided by the Penal Code.

Section 10. All fines collected under the provisions of this act shall go to the available common school fund of the county in which conviction is had. Prosecutions under the provisions of this act may be instituted in any court of competent jurisdiction in any county through or into which said railroad may be run or have an office.

Section 11. All laws and parts of laws in conflict herewith are hereby repealed.

Section 12. There being no adequate law on this subject creates an emergency and an imperative public necessity exists for the suspension of the constitutional rule: requiring bills to be read on three several days and the same is hereby suspended.

[Note.-The foregoing act was presented to the Governor of Texas approval on the nineteenth day of March, A. D. 1891, but was not signed by him nor returned to the house in which it originated with his objection thereto within the time prescribed by the constitution, and thereupon became a law without his signature.-Geo. W. Smith, Secretary of State.]

The Separate Coaches Act of 1891 was the first major segregation law of the “Jim Crow” era in Texas. The law left little room for ambiguity: compliance was mandatory, and both railroad companies and individual employees were held responsible for enforcing it. By requiring clear signage and providing legal backing for conductor authority, the statute effectively deputized transportation workers to police racial boundaries.

The law was a setback for Black civil rights, which had been hard-won through the Abolitionist Movement and the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865).

The apartheid system that it inaugurated persisted well into the 20th century and grew more restrictive and elaborate over time. Eventually, innumerable state laws and local ordinances required the separation of races not only on railways but also in schools, movie theaters, playgrounds, buses, waiting rooms, restaurants, public bathrooms, and other facilities.

Citizens in all walks of life eventually were implicated in enforcing the racial boundaries of Jim Crow—whether by choice or by compulsion. Transportation workers were the first, eventually to be followed by educators, police, waitresses, and many others.

The racial caste system enforced through Jim Crow laws was rolled back in the 1950s to 1970s, as a result of federal judicial rulings, the Civil Rights Movement, and social change.

Sources Cited

  1. Michael Ariens, Lone Star Law: A Legal History of Texas (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2011), pg. 59. ↩︎
  2. S.B. 97, 22d Leg., R.S. (1891) ↩︎
  3. S.B. 365, 22d Leg., R.S. (1891) ↩︎

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