During the Jim Crow era, streetcar and bus rides in southern cities provided relatively intimate, everyday experiences between blacks and whites. Among the many symbols of black subordination, urban transit segregation stands out as the most participatory form of racial apartheid. Brief depictions of racial confrontations on streetcars and busses appear frequently in most general studies of the Jim Crow era. However, no scholarly work had yet addressed continuity and change in segregated transit in one city over an extended period of time. This study surveys racial practices before, during and after the Jim Crow period in order to explain how race relations on the transit system functioned and changed in one city. New Orleans is an important city in which to base a longitudinal study of transit segregation, especially given the complexity of its tripartite racial structure In surveying such a long period, one gains insight into the more mundane and complex realities associated with urban transit segregation. Following the successful effort to end 19th century segregation, white passengers mainly waged rhetorical violence against black passengers, who rode with whites from 1867 to 1902. Letters and articles published in the daily newspapers recounted individual offenses taken by white passengers against black passengers, who were mainly female. Physical violence increased markedly following the re-introduction of racial segregation in 1902; however, verbal disputes stemming from the mobility of the 'race screens' designating compartments predominated. This study argues that white and black passengers exercised much more agency in racial segregation of public transit than most scholars have acknowledged. White passengers played a greater role in enforcing segregated transit than did the transit employees. Black riders both acquiesced to and challenged racial segregation throughout the Jim Crow period. Black passengers, when traveling on lines with a majority of black riders, often controlled the space. Two radical breaks from tradition receive special attention. A brief experiment in industrial unionism brought track gang workers and other black employees into the street carmen's union. Also, the employment of women operators as well as rural-born males during World War II exacerbated long extant racial conflict / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_24178 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Contributors | Mizell-Nelson, Michael Jack (Author), Powell, Lawrence (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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