Blair L. M. Kelley's Right To Ride: Streetcar Boycott

Blair L. M. Kelley’s Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy V. Ferguson tells stories of different desegregation movements on trains and streetcars at the turn of the twentieth century. Her book is the first account that connects the roots of segregation and dissent in the antebellum North, the legal efforts against segregated rails in New Orleans, and the streetcar boycotts in several southern cities. She not only describes the events but also deals with the questions of culture, gender, and leadership and their significant roles in black protests against segregation.

Kelley introduces her book with a common misconception of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1956 that

was considered the beginning of the civil rights movement. However, she examines the roots of the segregation and resistance, describing the earliest segregation movements in the antebellum North such as Elizabeth Jennings’ protest against segregated streetcar in New York. Jennings sued the company and won. Her case did not abolish segregated public transportation but gave hope and precedent to other black passengers to resist. Similarly, leaders like Frederick Douglas and Ida B. Wells also fought against segregated travel. Americans began to organize protests against segregated streetcars and rails that led to the Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which allowed states to continue segregation under the “separate but equal” principle. This was soon followed by the streetcar boycott movement taken place in southern cities from 1900 to 1907.
Kelley examines these boycott events organized in New Orleans, Richmond, and Savannah.

On the Southern trains, African Americans were forced to travel in the baggage car attached behind the engine that was the smokiest and the least comfortable form of travel. In some places like New Orleans, well-to-do free people of color were able to purchase first-class tickets and ride with white passengers in the “ladies’ car.” However, they were often forced to ride in the second-class smoking car that urged them to resist and file lawsuits, most notably the Plessy v. Ferguson. Mix-raced people of New Orleans, Afro-Creoles and American Africans, united against the “star-car” system and the Louisiana law segregating trains. They set up a test case to end segregation. In Virginia, the passage of segregation law caused the division of black middle class, the emergence of the press’ role, and growing presence of women in the resistance against segregation. Kelley demonstrates the class division between two prominent leaders of black communities in Richmond, editor John Mitchell Jr. and Maggie Lena Walker. Mitchell insisted that lower-class whites pushed for segregation, and African Americans should turn to middle-class whites for help. Walker advocated the unity of African Americans in the civil rights movement and economic independence. In Savannah, protesters achieved some success against segregation in 1872 and 1899, but they also had to face with white Progressivists’ purpose with

segregation: the termination of public conveyance monopoly. Black leaders quickly organized a boycott that although defeated the streetcar company, it remained segregated.
Kelley focuses on the generation of the so-called civil rights activists that contemporary historians, except August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, did not contribute much attention to. Although Meier’s and Rudwick’s articles chronicled these boycott movements, they examined them through the lens of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s and depicted them as conservative and accommodationist, supported by the followers of Booker T. Washington. None such studies examined the connection of the case of Plessy v. Ferguson to the “African American life and political culture in the age of segregation and protest.” By connecting the debates over black citizenship and the physical struggles on public conveyances, Kelley questions Washington’s accommodationist policy, arguing that dissent had a dominant presence.
John Mitchell, the editor of the Richmond Planet, was one of the most prominent leaders who opposed Washington’s policy and called for African American citizens to protest and agitate for their civil rights.

He used the press as a tool to address white and African American citizens, explaining the unnecessity of segregation laws on public conveyances since the two races had traveled in harmony the last forty years and there was no tension between them. In response to Virginia Passenger and Power’s policy, he asked his black fellow citizens not to use the streetcars and encouraged them to defend themselves against injustice and inequality. He insisted that the lack of passengers on the streetcars would result in the economic collapse of the company, which would abandon the voluntary segregation law. Although Mitchell represented a different view of racism in white society than that of Maggie Lena Walker, they united for the cause of defending black citizenship and organized a two-year boycott of streetcars in Richmond. Mitchell’s call for walk instead of ride spread across the country, gaining support from black advocates across the country and inspiring many southern cities to take action against segregation. Although the Virginia Passenger and Power Company did not stay in business, the boycott was unsuccessful. The General Assembly passed the law of mandated segregation on public

conveyances.
Kelley points out that court challenges did not achieve success because the disfranchisement of African Americans prevented them to be heard. The last resort was the organization of boycott movements that although did not stop the advancement of Jim Crow, their failure planted the seeds of resistance for the next generation. Ultimately, this resistance brought poor and rich, men and women together to fight against violence and indignity of second-class citizenship that laid the foundation of future civil rights movements.