From Virginia Postrel’s 1998 book, The Future and Its Enemies The railroads, writes historian Edward Ayers, “neither wanted to police Southern race relations and then be sued for it nor to run extra cars [to segregate black passengers from white passengers]. It was clear that white Southerners could not count on the railroads to take matters in hand” by blocking or expelling black passengers from their first-class cars. ”Some whites came to blame the railroads for the problem, says Ayers, “for it seemed to them that the corporations as usual were putting profits ahead of the welfare of the region.” The critics were mostly right. The railroads were not civil-rights pioneers but contract-bound, profit-seeking businesses for whom commerce was a “universal solvent.” Outraged southern legislators, who already resented the railroads’ economic power, passed laws requiring segregated accommodations. (It was one of these laws, passed by Louisiana in 1892, that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in the famous “separate but equal” case, Plessy v. Ferguson.) Combining the technocratic lust to regulate business with the reactionary zeal to preserve social stability, Jim Crow laws imposed static definitions on a dynamic commercial culture inclined to treat customers as “colorless, odorless, and timeless.” Regards, Jerry
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 04:56:44 +0000