nal encounters between the whites and
blacks. How is this object attained in the street cars of Southern
cities? Members of the different races occupy the same cars, separated
only by absurdly inadequate little open-mesh wire screens, so tiny and
light that a conductor can move them from one seat to another with the
strength of his little finger. Needless to add, these screens would
serve to obscure neither sound, sight, nor smell of drunken rowdies
who sat behind them! In summer cars black and white passengers may be
separated not even by a make-believe screen; they are simply required,
respectively, to occupy certain seats in the front or the back end of
the cars.

In Birmingham, Alabama, the front seats are assigned to Negroes in all
closed cars, and the back seats in all open ones. Why the front seats
in the one case, and the back seats in the other, it is not easy to
understand in the light of the letter and alleged spirit of the Jim Crow
law! The underlying purpose of the law is clearly not the separation
of the races in space; for public sentiment does not insist upon its
fulfillment to that end. The underlying purpose of it would seem to be
the separation of the races in status. The doctrine of inequality would
be attacked if white and black passengers rode in public conveyances on
equal terms; therefore the Negro who rides in a public conveyance
must do so, not as of undoubted right, but as with the white man's
permission, subject to the white man's regulation. "This place you may
occupy, that other you may not, because I am I and you are you, lest to
you or me it should be obscured that I am I and you are you." Such is
the real spirit of the Jim Crow laws.

Why is it that in every Southern city no Negro is allowed to witness a
dramatic performance, or a baseball game, from a first-class seat? In
every large city, there are hundreds of Negroes who would gladly pay
for first-class seats at the theatre and the baseball game, were they
permitted to. It can hardly be that permission is withheld because
theatres and baseball games are so well attended by half the population
that first-class seats could not be furnished for the other half. As a
matter of fact, theatre-auditoriums and baseball grand-stands are seldom
crowded; the rule is, not all first-class seats occupied, but many
vacant. Surely as simple as moving from seat to seat a make-shift screen
in a street-car, would it be to set apart a certain number of s