“Jim Crow” on Massachusetts Passenger Trains Harry Chase 2012
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“Jim Crow” on Massachusetts passenger trains Harry Chase 2012 Isaac Stearns (1790-1873), who lived in the southeastern Massachusetts village of East Mansfield, was a rare universal man. Besides being a farmer, he was editor and publisher of the Providence [R.I.] Free Press, a builder, a math teacher and a justice of the peace. He collected fossils and was an amateur astronomer and meteorologist. He sold silk from his own silkworms and kept bees. He taught himself Latin and Hebrew so he could read ancient scriptures and classics. When elected State Representative from the Mansfield district he read civil engineering books and pushed construction of the Hoosac railroad tunnel through the Berkshires. Most important for this story, Isaac Stearns was an active abolitionist and the corresponding secretary of the Mansfield Anti-Slavery Society. [1] In January 1842, when he temporarily lived and worked (in a textile mill) in the town of Norton, on the New Bedford railroad line just south of Mansfield, Stearns made an excursion that sheds light on a little known New England railroad practice of that day. He wrote in his diary on the 29th of the month: P.M. Went to Boston on the evening train of cars from Norton to attend the Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Expenses as follows: Fare in cars to Boston .37-1/2 cents Lodging on night of 26th .25 " Other incidental expenses .37-1/2 " Cars to East Foxboro, homewards on morning of 29th .50 (in Jim Crow) [2] Jim Crow? In supposedly enlightened Massachusetts, the cradle of freedom and liberty? Oh, yes! The truth is shocking. As late as 1843, Massachusetts blacks were prohibited from marrying whites, had to occupy the “Negro pew” in churches, and even in 1850 weren’t permitted to attend the same schools as white children. [3] These racial restrictions also applied to transportation. Prior to the railroads, free blacks traveling in Massachusetts were segregated from whites in stagecoaches [4] and on steamships. When trains began running, several Bay State railways, including the Eastern Railroad operating north from Boston, the New Bedford and Taunton, the Boston and Providence and the Boston and Lowell, made it a practice to herd black passengers into a separate car. This car at first had no particular name. A letter written in 1838 to The Massachusetts Spy, an abolitionist newspaper printed in Worcester, called it the "dirt car." [5] But in 1841, the Boston and Providence Rail Road connecting the capitals of Massachusetts and Rhode Island gained the dubious distinction of becoming the first railroad in the United States to use the term "Jim Crow" for cars employed in this form of rolling segregation. [6] The expression "Jim Crow" entered the American language in 1838 from the song and dance routine of Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice (1808-1860), a white English immigrant who performed a blackface take-off on a character he called “Jim Crow.” His act, entertaining and humorous to whites, ridiculous and demeaning to blacks, was known as "Jump Jim Crow." [7] Even when the Boston and Providence Rail Road was in the planning stage it was intended that special “steamboat trains” from Boston would connect at Providence with boats of the New York and Boston Transportation Company running between the Rhode Island capital and New York City by way of Long Island Sound. This combined rail-water service began as soon as the railroad opened for business in July 1835. [8] Shortly afterward, Thomas B. Wales of Boston, president and chairman of the board of directors of the Boston and Providence, [9] referring to free black would-be passengers, commented that “an appreciable number of the despised race demanded transportation. Scenes of riot and violence took place, and in the then existing state of opinion, it seemed to me that the difficulty could best be met by assigning a special car to our colored citizens.” [10] As a result, separate accommodations for blacks were introduced on that New England railroad. By 1838, incidents of blacks being forcibly removed from Boston and Providence trains for refusing to sit in segregated cars were frequently reported in Massachusetts newspapers. It wasn’t long before white abolitionists encouraged boycotts, though none were effective, and free blacks began seeking help before the Massachusetts state legislature, known as the Great and General Court. The Court at first seemed favorable to providing legal relief, and a joint legislative committee recommended a bill that would put a halt to racial separation. But opposition quickly reared its head. One senator claimed that “such legislation would not stop at forcing the mixture of Negroes and whites in railroad cars, but would subsequently be applied to hotels, religious societies, and through all ramifications of society.” The General Court, uneasy about such an extension of the original bill, did not pass the act. [11] The irony is that since 1839 in the slave states of the South, most free blacks, though they could ride in baggage cars for half fare, chose to pay full fare and take seats in regular passenger coaches, whereas on many railroads in the North, free blacks were not allowed to ride in the same cars with whites. [12] Alabama (to name a typical Deep South state) did not enact so-called "separate but equal" (in reality, unequal) laws for railroad passengers until 1 January 1891. [13] That keen observer of pre-railroad America, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), who came from France to spend a year in the United States in 1831 and 1832, saw the reason behind this curious anomaly even before it happened. Because of legally enforceable barriers in the slave states, southern whites did not worry about blacks becoming their social and economic equals. But northern whites, having more to fear from free blacks being their equals, kept them separate. [14] A remark attributed to French revolutionist Maximilien Robespierre sheds further light on the northern point of view: "Men would rather submit to masters themselves than see the number of their equals multiply." [15] Most early Massachusetts railroads, following the practice already established by the steamboat companies, operated first and second class passenger service. Jim Crow railroad accommodations probably equated to second class travel. [16] But when we take another look at the railroad fares paid by Isaac Stearns, we see a couple of odd inconsistencies. Why did the cost of Stearns's Jim Crow ticket for the 21 miles from Boston to East Foxborough so greatly exceed that for the 28 miles from Norton to Boston? My guess is that Stearns paid the fare of a fellow passenger – one of the free black attendees at the Anti-Slavery convention – whose name he chose not to divulge. And since Stearns was working in Norton probably six days a week, as was then the custom, why, after leaving Boston at seven in the morning of Saturday the 29th, did he elect to detrain at East Foxborough station instead of riding the remaining seven miles to his day's work in Norton? It appears likely that not only was he accompanied by a free black whose fare he paid, but that he escorted the mystery traveler to the safety of his or another's house in East Mansfield – from East Foxborough it was only two miles along country roads to Stearns's home. But who might Stearns's companion have been? Frederick Douglass (c.1818-1895), who then lived in New Bedford, from August to September 1841 in company with noted white abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) and Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) toured southeastern New England, speaking before anti-slavery gatherings. Isaac Stearns records in his diary that on the evening of 17 October 1841, he met Douglass and heard him lecture in the Reverend Mr. Holden's church in Norton. [17] Frederick Douglass was one of the most remarkable men in 19th century America. Born into slavery in Maryland, he escaped at age 20, made his way disguised as a sailor to New York, where he married a free black woman, and thence to New Bedford. Unlike most slaves, he’d learned to read, and from studying the Bible and the classics could speak like an orator. He became an active abolitionist and a journalist, was received by President Lincoln in the White House and was appointed United States consul general and minister to Haiti. [18] His first winter in the Whaling City he worked as a paid servant for Colonel John Henry Clifford, “the most aristocratic gentleman in Bristol county.” [19] In August 1841 Douglass went with Garrison to an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket, and for the first time spoke extempore before a sizable audience. While there, John A. Collins, general agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, persuaded him to become a paid lecturer with the group. For the next three months Douglass, in company with Collins, spoke throughout eastern Massachusetts. Although influential men like Wendell Phillips traveled with him, [20] Douglass had repeated clashes with Jim Crow on trains, and in one case when he was banished to the railroad car reserved for blacks, Phillips went with him. (Obviously, if seats in regular cars were forbidden to blacks, the reverse did not apply – apparently neither the railroad companies nor anyone else cared if a white man rode in the “dirt car.") Douglass had to be cautious in his movements because in Maryland he was still regarded as a runaway slave, and although the iniquitous 1850 Fugitive Slave Act had yet to be passed by the U.S. Congress, he was liable to be kidnapped by hired bounty hunters and returned to his former master.