Jim Crow Laws: Louisiana, Maine and Maryland

Jim Crow Laws: Louisiana, Maine and Maryland [The editors of Americans All ] (c.1877 - c.1967) Code, Colored, Constitution, Descendant, Felony, Intermarriage, Legislature, Mulatto, Negro, Nurse, Ordinance, Penal Code, Public Transportation, Railroads, Schools, Segregation, Separate But Equal, Slavery, Statute, Supreme Court, Voting, Waiting Rooms

LOUISIANA

Background information is provided to put the Jim Crow laws in context and explain how minorities were treated prior to the Civil War. In a few cases, the dates of specific information also have been provided. For most of U.S. history, people of different races have lived on separate streets, gone to separate schools and occupied separate parts of town. In the South, racial segregation was once the law of the land. While the region has made progress toward integration in recent years, most major Southern cities remain segregated today. Two of the top four cities are Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Source

Many of these entries came from an inactive website—www.jimcrowhistory.org—though much of the data previously posted on that website has been reproduced on other websites. To avoid repeating the source of information for these entries, we have added the symbol “#” at the end of each of them. Capitalization of words follows the original usage, and many of the entries have been edited for clarity.

1890: The legislature passed a "separate railroad cars" law, stating that "no person or persons shall be permitted to occupy seats in coaches, other than the ones assigned to them on account of the race they belong to." The law required railroads to provide "equal but separate" facilities to those different races, but it did not define "race" and left to conductors the job of assigning passengers to the proper cars. Railway companies to provide equal but separate accommodations for white and colored passengers. Penalty: Passengers or conductors not complying with the law subject to a fine of $25 or imprisonment for 20 days. Officers and directors of railway companies that fail to comply guilty of a misdemeanor and could be fined between $100 and $500. Law did not apply to streetcars. Source

1894: A Statute bars intermarriage between white persons and persons of color. #

1894: A Statute states that depots must provide equal but separate waiting rooms for the white and colored races. Law must be posted in a conspicuous place. Penalty: Persons who insist on entering the improper place may be fined $25 or imprisoned up to 30 days. Agents failing to enforce the law guilty of misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of $25 to $50. #

1898: The Constitution establishes free public schools for the white and colored races. #

1902: A Statute provides that all streetcars must provide separate but equal accommodations. Penalty: Passengers or conductors not complying could receive a fine of $25 or imprisonment up to 30 days. A railway company that refused to comply could receive a fine of $100, or imprisonment between 60 days and six months. #

1908: A Statute made it unlawful for whites and blacks to buy and consume alcohol on the same premises. Penalty: Misdemeanor, punishable by a fine between $50 to $500, or imprisonment in the parish prison or jail up to two years. #

1908: A Statute states that concubinage between the Caucasian or white race and any person of the Negro or black race is a felony. Penalty: Imprisonment from one month to one year, with or without hard labor. #

1910: A Statute restates the law passed in 1908, using the words "Persons of the Caucasian and colored races." #

1912: A Statute states that building permits for building Negro houses in white communities, or any portion of a community inhabited principally by white people, and vice versa are prohibited. Penalty: violators fined from $50 to $2,000," and the municipality shall have the right to cause said building to be removed and destroyed." #

1914: A Statute states that all circuses, shows and tent exhibitions required to provide two ticket offices, two ticket sellers and two entrances to the performance, one for each race. #

1918: A Statute provided for the segregation of the races in all municipal, parish and state prisons. #

1921: A Statute prohibited Negro and white families from living in the same dwelling place. #

1921: The Constitution called for separate, free public schools for the education of white and black children between the ages of six and eighteen years. #

1928: A Statute mandated equal but separate accommodations to be provided on all public carriers. #

1932: A State Code outlawed interracial marriages. Nullified interracial marriages if parties went to another jurisdiction where such marriages were legal. Also prohibited Negroes and Indians to marry each other. #

1932: A State Code provides that no person or corporation shall rent a unit in an apartment house or other like structure to a person who is not of the same race as the other occupants. #

1942: A Statute mandates that separate but equal accommodations for the races to be provided in old age homes. #

1945: No person of color can marry a white person. Intermarriage of Indians and colored is prohibited. Source is: LA. CIVIL CODE, Art. 94

1951: A Statute forbids interracial adoptions. #

1951: A Statute declares that cohabitation between whites and black is illegal. Penalty: Up to $1,000, or up to 5 years imprisonment, or both. #

1952: A State Code prohibits marriage between whites and persons of color. Penalty: Up to $1,000 and/or five years imprisonment. #

1954: A Statute was created immediately after the Brown decision amending its Constitution to state that all public and elementary schools would be operated separately for white and black children. Penalty: $500 to $1,000 for not enforcing and imprisonment from three to six months. #

1956: A Statutes stated that firms were prohibited from permitting on their premises any dancing, social functions, entertainments, athletic training, games, sports or contests in which the participants are members of the white and Negro races. #

1956: A Statute revises older laws requiring that common carriers provide separate waiting rooms for white intrastate passengers and for Negro intrastate and interstate passengers. #

1956: A Statue provided that all persons, firms or corporations create separate bathroom facilities for members of the white and Negro races employed by them or permitted to come upon their premises. In addition, separate eating places, rooms and eating and drinking utensils were to be provided for members of the white and Negro races. Penalty: Misdemeanor, $100 to $1,000, 60 days to one year imprisonment. #

1956: A Statue states that all public parks, recreation centers, playgrounds, etc. would be segregated. This provision was made "for the purpose of protecting the public health, morals and the peace and good order in the state and not because of race." #

1957: The Constitution requires that all public schools to be racially segregated. #

1957: A Statute stated that compulsory attendance suspended in school systems where integration ordered; no state funds to non-segregated schools. #

1958: A Statute stated that all human blood to be used in the state of Louisiana for transfusions to be labeled with the word "Caucasian," "Negroid," or "Mongoloid" to clearly indicate the race of the donor. If the blood was not labeled it was not permitted to be used. #

1960: A Statue required that the race of all candidates named on ballots be designated. #

MAINE

Background information is provided to put the Jim Crow laws in context and explain how minorities were treated prior to the Civil War. In a few cases, the dates of specific information also have been provided. The following is an excerpt from a 2011 interview with Gerald Talbot, former head of the NAACP for Maine and in 1972, he became the first black in Maine to be elected to the House of Representatives. “Maine wasn’t like the south when it came to segregation and discrimination against blacks.

You could get on a trolley or bus. There weren’t sections reserved for whites or blacks,

or signs on water fountains that read ‘Whites Only’ or ‘Colored.’ But there was a lot of racism, discrimination and prejudice. One of the biggest was being blocked to jobs. He grew up in Bangor. Talbot’s father was a chef for the Bangor House. Blacks were hired in kitchens, in construction and as loggers. But we were shut out from a lot of jobs. There were no black nurses, doctors, lawyer or firemen. Jobs blacks were qualified to do, we weren’t allowed to do.” Source

MARYLAND

Background information is provided to put the Jim Crow laws in context and explain how minorities were treated prior to the Civil War. In a few cases, the dates of specific information also have been provided. In 1661, it passed the first Anti-Amalgamation law Source to prevent marriages between Black men and English women. It was an early white-American effort to avoid the intersectionality of gender, color, class, religious identity, nationality and more. It criminalized them in 1664. Interracial marriage was a fairly common practice during the colonial era among white indentured servants and Black slaves as well as in more aristocratic circles. In 1796, courts declare that black testimony is inadmissible in freedom suits and in 1802, its General Assembly declares that free blacks cannot vote. In 1832, new restrictions were placed on free blacks. They could not enter the state, could not own arms with county certification, purchase alcohol, powder and gun shot and could not hold religious meetings unless a white minister was present. Source

Early 1870: The Baltimore City Passenger Railway furnished separate cars for blacks—a change from its prior policy of relegating blacks to the uncovered platform outside the covered portion of the railway car. Source In 1876, a federal district court, in Cully v. Baltimore, (6 F. Cas. 946, 1 Hughes 536) found that federal law could not require integrated cars on trains traveling intrastate, as opposed to interstate. This meant unfriendly state courts were the only route for black citizens to challenge Jim Crow practices. Source

1884: Legislature reaffirms opposition to interracial marriage (Chapter 264). In 1885, a Maryland federal district court upheld racially separate sleeping accommodations on steamboats. However, the court allowed the black women plaintiffs to recover damages because their sleeping accommodations were vastly unequal to those provided white women traveling first class. The miscegenation statute was not repealed until 1967. Source

1890s: Blacks had limited or no access to restaurants and theaters patronized by whites. The public schools in Baltimore also were segregated. Source Maryland Law School, which admitted black students in 1885, discontinued the practice in 1890. A new miscegenation law, replacing a statute repealed in 1867, was enacted in 1884 in response to the marriage of Frederick Douglass to Helen Pitts Douglass, a white woman. Source

1870: A Statute stated that taxes paid by colored people shall be set aside for maintaining schools for colored children. #

1871: John W. Fields, a black barber visiting Baltimore from Virginia, ejected from a streetcar. #

1872: A Statute required schools to be established for colored children. No colored school shall be established in a district unless the colored population warrants. #

1884: Legislature reaffirms opposition to interracial marriage by adding an additional section forbidding marriages between white persons and persons of negro descent to the third generation. Penalty: Person guilty of infamous crime and subject to a sentence of imprisonment in the penitentiary between 18 months to ten years. Ministers who performed such ceremonies were to be fined $100. Source is: Chapter 264, Laws of 1884: AN ACT to amend article thirty of the Code of Public General Laws, title " Crimes and Punishments," sub-title " Marrying Unlawfully,"

1889: The court, in McGuinn v. Forbes (37 F. 639), refused to declare unlawful racially separate dining tables on steamboats. Source

1904: A Statute (Chapter 109) stated that all railroad companies required to provide separate cars or coaches for white and colored passengers. Signage in plain letters to be displayed in a conspicuous place. Penalty: Companies that failed to comply could be fined between $300 and $1,000. Passengers who refused to take their assigned seat could be charged with a misdemeanor and fined between $5 and $50, or imprisoned in jail for 30 days, or both. Conductors who failed to carry out the law could be charged with a misdemeanor and fined between $25 and $50. Source

1904: An Act to provide for the separate accommodation of white and colored passengers in the sitting, sleeping and eating apartments of all steamboats plying in the waters within the jurisdiction of Maryland, without any difference or discrimination in the quality of and convenience of accommodation. Penalty: Company officers who failed to enforce the law could be charged with a misdemeanor and fined between $25 and $50. Passengers who refused to sit where assigned were liable for misdemeanor and could be fined between $5 and $50. Source is: Chapter 110, Laws of 1904:

1908: A Statute regarding steamboats operating on the Chesapeake Bay required to provide separate toilets, retiring rooms, and separate sleeping cabins for white and black passengers. Penalty: $50 for each day's violation. #

1908: A Statute requiring streetcars to designate separate seats for white and colored passengers. Penalty: Passengers who refused to comply with law guilty of a misdemeanor, and could be fined up to $50, or imprisoned in jail for 30 days, or both. Conductors who refused to enforce the act were guilty of a misdemeanor and could be fined up to $20. #

1924: State Codes declared miscegenation declared a felony and required racially segregated schools. #

1935: A Statute prohibited miscegenation between persons of the Caucasian and Negroes, or a person of Negro descent to the third generation. It is a felony. Marriages of Negroes and Malayans are also prohibited. Source is: Code, Art. 27, & 365 (1924); Laws, c. 60

1942: The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled in the case of Murphy v. Durkee that separation of the races is normal treatment in Maryland. Source

1951: A State Code made it the duty of County Board of Education to establish free public schools for all colored children between the ages of 6 and 20 years. #

1951: A Statute barred public accommodation segregation. #

1954: The U.S. Court for the District of Maryland ruled in Lonesome v. Maxwell, (123 F. Supp. 1934) that racial segregation in public beaches, bath houses and swimming pools by the State and the City of Baltimore was upheld. Source

1955: A Statute stated that any white woman who delivered a child conceived with a Negro or mulatto would be sentenced to the penitentiary for 18 months to 5 years. #

1957: A State Code made it a crime for white woman to bear a black man's child. Law held unconstitutional later that year. #

1957: A State Code prohibited marriage between whites and Negroes or Asians. Penalty: 18 months to 10 years imprisonment. #

1957: A State Code required race to be disclosed on petition for adoption. #

1967: Barred anti-miscegenation [Statute] Repealed anti-miscegenation law. #

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Jim Crow Laws: Louisiana, Maine and Maryland Code, Colored, Constitution, Descendant, Felony, Intermarriage, Legislature, Mulatto, Negro, Nurse, Ordinance, Penal Code, Public Transportation, Railroads, Schools, Segregation, Separate But Equal, Slavery, Statute, Supreme Court, Voting, Waiting Rooms