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“A New Ethnology”: The Legal Expansion of Whiteness under Early Jim Crow
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 June 2021
Abstract
The segregation laws known as “Jim Crow” are often understood as legislative efforts to promote White supremacy by shielding White southerners from contact with other races. This was not the case, however. By analyzing early railway segregation laws–in particular, the 1890 Louisiana law that was challenged in Plessy v. Ferguson–this article shows that the first post-Reconstruction segregations laws used an expansive definition of the “white race” as everyone who was not Black. In short, White purity and separation were the pretext, not the purpose, of early Jim Crow laws. Instead, the structure of legal segregation was initially determined by White, Democratic legislators' efforts to isolate and subjugate Black Americans by reinstating the racial logic of slavery, which had divided the world into Black people and everyone else. To achieve this end, White supremacist lawmakers framed laws that strategically integrated “white” train cars, all the while claiming the laws did the opposite.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society for Legal History
Footnotes
He thanks Christopher Tomlins, Tejas Narechania, Aubrey Hirsch, Gautham Rao, and the readers at Law and History Review for their encouragement and perceptive feedback. This article benefitted immeasurably from the time and thought that they invested in it. Larissa Davis, Mark Elliott, Ian Haney López, Adam Mazel, and Behrang Seraj also provided generous assistance by responding to inquiries, reading drafts, discussing ideas, or helping with sources. Finally, he acknowledges an unrepayable debt to Anita Norich and Deborah Dash Moore, two remarkable scholars and teachers.
References
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20. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
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22. 109 U.S. 3 (1883).
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25. State v. Treadaway, 126 La. 300, 305 (La. 1910).
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27. Act of Apr. 16, 1889, ch. 108, 1889 Tex. Gen. Laws 132.
28. Act of Mar. 29, 1891, ch. 41, § 1–2, 1891 Tex. Gen. Laws 44.
29. Fla. Rev. Stat. tit. 1, ch. 1, § 1 (1892).
30. Ga. Civil Code tit. 1, ch. 1, art. 3, § 1820 (1895).
31. Act of Feb. 23, 1891, ch. 17, § 4, 1891 Ark. Acts 15, 17; and Act of Dec. 18, 1907, ch. 15, § 3, 1907–08 Okla. Sess. Laws 201, 2002.
32. Ala. Criminal Code ch. 182, art. 11, § 5377 (1897).
33. Act of Feb. 19, 1898, ch. 483, 1898 S.C. Acts 777.
34. Act of Feb. 23, 1891, ch. 17, § 4, 1891 Ark. Acts 15, 17.
35. Okla. Const. art. XXIII, § 445.
36. Tex. Rev. Stat. tit. 10, ch. 1, art. 327 (1879).
37. In re Halladjian, 174 F. 834, 843 (C.C.D. Mass. 1909).
38. “Current Legislation and Litigation,” Railway and Corporation Law Journal, August 15, 1891, 136, 138.
39. Quoted in “The Scrap Heap,” Railroad Gazette, August 21, 1891, 585.
40. “A Law that Works Both Ways,” Indianapolis Journal, September 10, 1891, 4.
41. “The Jim Crow Car,” Crittenden Press, October 13, 1892, https://perma.cc/3T86-XGVB.
42. “Rode in Jim Crow Cars. Colored Delegates to the Nashville Convention Feel Aggrieved,” Washington Post, January 5, 1892, 8.
43. Gross, What Blood Won't Tell, 217. See also Painter, History of White People, 390.
44. Act of March 26, 1790, ch. 3, 1 Stat. 103; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, § 311, ch. 2, 66 Stat. 239; and Act of July 14, 1870, ch. 254 § 7, 256.
45. Haney López, White by Law, 1.
46. Pascoe, What Comes Naturally, 8.
47. See generally Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go.
48. Department of the Interior, Census Office, Compendium of the Eleventh Census: 1890, Part I, Population (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1892), ciii–civ. P. B. S. Pinchback held the governorship from December 9, 1872, until January 13, 1873. Robert Fay, “Pinchback, P. B. S.,” Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African & African American Experience, 2nd ed., ed. Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2:517.
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54. James K. Hogue, Uncivil War: Five New Orleans Street Battles and the Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011), 107–12, 116.
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57. Congressional Record Containing the Proceedings and Debates of the Fiftieth Congress, First Session (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1888), 19:8989.
58. Hogue, Uncivil War, 3.
59. “New World Migrations,” Daily Picayune, June 20, 1889, 4.
60. See, for example, “Project to Colonize the Negroes,” Daily Picayune, October 9, 1889, 4; Wm. P. Calhoun, “Negro Colonization,” Daily Picayune, October 9, 1889, 6; “Moving Southward,” Daily Picayune, October 12, 1889, 4; and “Colonizing the Negroes,” Daily Picayune, October 19, 1889, 4.
61. “The Negro Question in Congress,” reprinted in Opelousas Courier, December 21, 1889, https://perma.cc/4T68-K22D.
62. “Invoking the Nation Against the South,” Daily Picayune, November 1, 1888, 6.
63. Blair L. M. Kelley, Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2010), 62.
64. Act of July 10, 1890, no. 111, 1890 La. Laws 152.
65. The terms “Mongolians” and “Malays” referred to people from different regions of Asia. Chinese Americans were grouped among the “Mongolian race.”
66. Official Journal of the Proceedings of House of Representatives of the State of Louisiana (hereafter La. House Journal) (Baton Rouge: Advocate, 1890), 181.
67. P. B. S. Pinchback, A. E. P. Albert, A. S. Jackson, S. T. Clanton, T. A. Wilson, E. Lyon, J. T. Newman, I. E. Mullon, T. B. Stamps, Paul Trevigne, James Lewis, Laurent Auguste, R. L. Desdunes, L. A. Martinet, J. F. Marshall, W. S. Wilson and J. L. Minor, “Protest of the American Citizens’ Equal Rights Association, of Louisiana, against Class Legislation,” Southwestern Christian Advocate, June 5, 1890, 4. The protest was also printed in the La. House Journal, 127–28.
68. La. House Journal, 201; “Political Review,” Southwestern Christian Advocate, July 17, 1890, 4.
69. La. House Journal, 203–4. The derogatory term “Dago” referred to Italian Americans.
70. Official Journal of the Proceedings of the Senate of the State of Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Advocate, 1890), 410.
71. Journal of the House of Representatives, State of Arkansas (Morrilton: Pilot, 1891), 187.
72. Journal of the Senate of Texas (Austin: Smiths, Hicks & Jones, 1889), 111.
73. New Orleans Crusader, July 19, 1890, quoted in Steve Luxenberg, Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019), 394.
74. Kelley, Right to Ride, 65–70; Luxenberg, Separate, 392–94, 410–17; and Charles A. Lofgren, The Plessy Case: A Legal-Historical Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 30–31.
75. Mark Elliott, Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 264.
76. New Orleans Daily Crusader, June 1892, quoted in Keith Weldon Medley, We as Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson (Gretna: Pelican Publishing, 2003), 146.
77. Luxenberg, Separate, 431–32; Kelley, Right to Ride, 74, 79.
78. Brief for Plaintiff in Error at *37–38, Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) (No. 210), 1893 WL 10660 (hereafter “Plessy Brief [Tourgée],” “Plessy Brief [Walker],” or “Plessy Brief [Tourgée/Walker]”). The lawyers’ sections of the brief, along with a co-authored section, are published together.
79. Plessy Brief (Walker), *37–38.
80. Plessy Brief (Tourgée/Walker), *4.
81. Plessy Brief (Tourgée), *8–9.
82. Ibid., *9–10 (emphasis removed).
83. Plessy Brief (Walker), *38.
84. Ibid., *39–40.
85. Ibid., *51.
86. Argument of A. W. Tourgée, 1896, item 6472, Albion Winegar Tourgée Collection, Chautauqua County Historical Society.
87. In the Civil Rights Cases, the Supreme Court found that the Thirteenth Amendment, which banned slavery and involuntary servitude, also gave Congress the power to enact legislation to prevent the “badges and incidents of slavery.” 109 U.S. 3, 20 (1883); U.S. Const. amend. XIII, § 1–2.
88. Brief for Plaintiff in Error at *7–8, Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) (No. 210), 1896 WL 13990.
89. Ibid., *13.
90. Brief for Defendant in Error at *38, Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 543 (1896) (No. 210), 1896 WL 13992 (U.S.) (Appellate Brief).
91. Ibid., *45.
92. Mark Golub, “Plessy as ‘Passing’: Judicial Responses to Ambiguously Raced Bodies in Plessy v. Ferguson,” Law & Society Review 39 (2005): 576.
93. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 552 (1896).
94. Plessy, 561 (Harlan, J., dissenting).
95. Jennifer R. Nájera, The Borderlands of Race: Mexican Segregation in a South Texas Town (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015), 28.
96. The national census of 1890 counted only 333 “Chinese,” 39 “Japanese,” and 627 “Civilized Indians” among Louisiana's 1,118,587 residents. Compendium of the Eleventh Census, x, 470.
97. La. House Journal, 332.
98. Bronstein, “Segregation,” 119.
99. Welke, Recasting American Liberty, 348–49; and C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, Comm. Ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2002), 24.
100. Kelley, Right to Ride, 37; Act of July 10, 1890, no. 111, § 3, 1890 La. Acts 152, 153.
101. “On the Right Track,” Opelousas Courier, March 7, 1891, https://perma.cc/E5AS-SY5Z.
102. Cheng, “Jim Crow,” 795.
103. La. House Journal, 201.
104. Ibid., 202–3.
105. I. B. Scott, “Separate Railway Cars for White and Colored Passengers in Texas,” Southwestern Christian Advocate, May 16, 1889.
106. W. S. Scarborough, “A Step Backward,” Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, September 19, 1891, 98.
107. Quoted in Shankman, Arnold, Ambivalent Friends: Afro-Americans View the Immigrant (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 51Google Scholar.
108. Chesnutt, Charles W., The Marrow of Tradition (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1901), 59Google Scholar.
109. Boyd, R. H., The Separate or “Jim Crow” Car Laws or Legislative Enactments of Fourteen Southern States (Nashville: National Baptist Publishing Board, 1909), 5Google Scholar.
110. Grossman, James R., Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 17Google Scholar.
111. La. House Journal, 202–3.
112. Hinnershitz, Different Shade of Justice, 5.
113. Pinchback et al., “Protest of the American Citizens’ Equal Rights Association, ” 4.
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