The codification of Jim Crow: The origins of segregated railroad transit in the South, 1865-191

The appearance of segregated transit laws in the American South in the late nineteenth century reflected not only an increase of racial tensions, but also a heightening of social and economic pressures brought about by the fulfillment of the New South Creed. While many Southern states enacted legislation prohibiting miscegenation and racially-mixed public schools in the 1860s and 1870s, Jim Crow railroad laws did not become common until the last decade of the nineteenth century. No one has yet explored why segregated transit laws appeared so late in comparison with other forms of statutory segregation. Why did Southern legislators wait to enact separate coach laws? To what extent did customary racial separation exist on public transportation prior to the enactment of those laws? How does the southern railroad boom in the 1870s and 1880s relate to the late codification of Jim Crow transit? How did the economic concerns of the New South influence Southern politics?;This dissertation answers these questions by examining the factors leading to the codification of Jim Crow on Southern railroads, from the antebellum common law of transit until the turn of the century, when segregation statutes spanned the region. It shows that the emergence of Southern segregated transit laws was not merely an expression of racist ideology but a dynamic process in which race, class, and New South rhetoric converged. Southern society, transformed by emancipation, industrialization, and the growing importance of railroads, forced legal doctrines to evolve according to its new demands.;Racism and politics, while crucial elements of segregation law, cannot adequately account for the passage or the timing of Jim Crow railroad laws. Instead, the railway boom in the post-Civil War South produced a myriad of social and economic conditions that created an environment favorable to legalized racial separation. Because of the powerful influence of railroads on the Southern economy, the operating regulations of the individual companies and the philosophies of their leaders created a form of law previously ignored by historians. The legal separation of races, then, resulted not only from changes in statutory law, but also from the evolution of cases, company rules, and the common law. The convergence of these distinct legal forces during the last decade of the nineteenth century created the Southern law of segregation.