Segregation on Airlines
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: segregation on airlines query
I was describing to my class in Mississippi history the separate waiting rooms, restrooms, drinking fountains, rail cars, etc., that still could be found across the south in the mid-50s, and began wondering how the careful etiquette of Jim Crow was negotiated on airlines. I'm assuming there were separate waiting areas at airports, but what about seating arrangements on planes? on planes that originated in the north and landed in the south? Can someone point me to a description of how this circumstance was handled? Thanks.
Will Glass
Division of Humanities
Mississippi University for Women
wglass@sunmuw1.muw.edu
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Airline Segregation 3 responses
Will Glass raises an interesting question to which I do not offer a complete answer. There were relatively few African American passengers on American airlines prior to the mid-1960s. King was refused service in the white (public) section of the Atlanta airport in the late 1950s, but he also refers to conversations with white passengers occupying the seat next to him on airplanes in the period. After the Montgomery bus boycott was settled, some of the ministers who flew into and out of the Montgomery airport wanted to make its desegregation a priority of the Montgomery Improvement Association; others felt that there were other issues which were more vital to the lives of ordinary African American people in the city.
Ralph E. Luker
rluker@netcom.com
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Chris Joyner writes:
If I remember correctly, this was a real dilemma for segregationists in the South. On one hand, they didn't want to let a crack like this appear in the facade of segregation, and on the other hand, they didn't want to look like fools. If a plane took off from New York and landed in Miami, did the African American and the white passengers have to rearrange themselves in mid-flight to accomodate the Jim Crow laws of each state through which they were passing? I don't think that the issue was ever settled, and I imagine a number of policies were implemented by individual airlines. I also imagine that the implementation of any pattern of air travel segregation was hindered by federal regulations.
I would also like to hear if anyone has any more information on this subject. One would think that the pattern of segregation would depend on the passengers departure point. A passenger might take a segregated flight from Atlanta to Chicago and then take an integrated return trip.
CORE realized that interstate travel was a weak link in segregation, and that figured into their strategy for the Freedom Rides of 1961 from Washington D.C. to New Orleans, although they never made it that far (by bus).
Chris Joyner
University of Southern Mississippi (alumn)
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The standard work on the desegregation of southern transportation is Catherine Barnes, JOURNEY FROM JIM CROW: THE DESEGREGATION OF SOUTHERN TRANSPORTATION, Columbia Univ. Press, 1983.
Charles H. Martin, UTE
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Stories and segue regarding airline desegregation - 3 responses
My aunt, a well-known opera singer of the 50s & 60s, flew from Birmingham to Atlanta on, I presume, a Delta plane. She was sitting behind Dr. King who had that day been released from the Birmingham jail. One of his assistancts was with him. That flight, at least, was not segregated. She spoke to him and conveyed our family's support. Apparently she and he both were quite weepy and he insisted on carrying her bag from the plane into the terminal!
Diana Wright 20wrighd@cua.edu
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Jack Davis writes:
In reference to Will Glass's question about airline segregation, his students in the Mississippi history class might find a couple of remnants of segregation interesting. At Jackson's Allen Thompson Airport, dedicated to city's segregationist mayor, the arch nemesis of civil rights activists, one can see where the entrances to the old "colored" restrooms have been bricked up. They are like apparitions permanently etched in the wall. Also, one semester when I taught at Millsaps in Jackson, I took my class to breakfast at the Sunflower restaurant, always a local landmark and once a hangout for the Beckwith types. Before we left I had them all go to the restroom, which requires a trek through the kitchen and up a long flight of stairs. At the top they found four doors. Two led into cramped storerooms which at one time were the restrooms for blacks. The nails that held the old "colored" signs are still in the doors. One more bit of trivia before I tell Prof. Glass that I don't have an answer to his original question. During the 1960s, the old Primo's restaurant located downtown refused to take Kennedy half dollars. Sadly, Primo's, the successor to the original that moved to the edge of the once-exclusive Jackson suburb, Belhaven, burned down a couple of years ago. It lit up like a torch--too much grease on the walls. One more thing. There is a black artist that lives in Ecru, Mississippi, not too far from Prof. Glass. His name is M.B. Mayfield, and, contrary to common belief, he was the first black student at Ole Miss. In 1949 an art professor discovered Mayfield's talent and brought him to the university as a janitor. After he finished his chores, he would take an easel in the janitor's closet situated next to the art class. Students and faculty donated his materials. Mayfield swept and studied at Ole Miss for three years, thirteen before James Meredith officially desegregated the school.
Jack E. Davis
Eckerd College
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Paul Gaston writes:
The recent discussion of airline segregation (I think "no fixed pattern" is probably the right answer, but I have no authority for saying that) put me in mind of an interesting discovery John White shared with me, from his E.D. Nixon research. He found the telephone company declining to give Nixon a party-line phone until one was available on which there were no whites as party-line sharers. Has anyone come across similar incidents?
Paul M. Gaston
Professor of History
University of Virginia
Home: 810 Rugby Rd.
Charlottesville, VA 22903
ph: (804) 296-9089
pmg@faraday.clas.virginia.edu
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Jack Davis comment on airline segregation
>From Dan Vogt, Jackson State U.
One correction in reference to Jack Davis' interesting comments on Jackson, Ms.: The Sunflower restaurant is actually the Mayflower Cafe.
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996
From: Gregory McDonald
Subject: Airline Segregation
It just so happens that I am reading Woodward's "Strange Career..." right now and he says:
"The arrival of the age of air transportation appears to have put a strain upon the ingenuity of the Jim Crow lawmakers. Even to the orthodox there was doubtless soumething slightly incongruous about requiring a Jim Crow compartment on a transcontinental plane, or one that did not touch the ground between New York and Miami. No Jim Crow law has been found that applies to passengers while they are in the air. So long as they were upon the ground, however, they were still subject to J.C. jurisdiction." THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW 3rd revised edition, Oxford, 1974, page 117.
hope this helps.
Gregory L. McDonald
University of Southern Mississippi
mcdonal3@whale.st.usm.edu
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996
From: George B. Tindall
Subject: Segregation: airlines and other places
In the message from Gregory McDonald quoting Woodward's _Strange Career_ on the lack of Jim Crow laws for airplanes, while doing research for _South Carolina Negroes, 1877-1900_ years ago, I came across the fact that the South Carolina legislature never got around to passing a Jim Crow law for inter-city buses until 1937, although the buses had practiced J. C. for years.
And some years later, being involved with local arrangements for the Southern Historical Association at Asheville, NC, in 1963, I was told by the director of the Asheville Convention Bureau that the hotels would be happy to open their rooms to all visitors but for the state law requiring segregation. Back in Chapel Hill, I consulted with friends in the UNC Law School. They could find no such law--and the hotels were as good as their word. Of course, a year later, that became a moot point with passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
George B. Tindall Kenan Professor of History Emeritus 305 Burlage Circle University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27514-2703 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3195 Tel 919-942-5671 Tel: 919/962-2115 e-mail: tindall@email.unc.edu Fax: 919/962-1403
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Segregation - 2 responses
Chris Joyner writes:
I think that what Prof. Tindall is alluding to is very interesting, even though I might be getting a little off topic. Much of segregationist policy in the South was maintained more by custom than by law; and when the custom was challenged, attempts were then made to codify the practice. However, for Jim Crow, as many civil rights strategists knew, the devil was in the details. For instance, while customary segregationist policy might work for streetcars, it fell to pieces when applied to transcontinental flight. Or if inter-city public transportation was covered under segregationist law, Jim Crow could be attacked through interstate transportation.
Also, consider the lunchcounter sit-ins as another gray area of segregationist policy. African Americans were allowed to make purchases of mechandise from the store, but were not allowed to eat there. If African Americans had not been allowed to enter the building at all, the protestors might have had to adopt a different strategy. As it was, the student protestors made their purchases (which were perfectly "legitimate" by segregationist standards) but refused to leave the store until they had been served.
Similarly, when the Ashville Convention Bureau told Professor Tindall that Asheville hotels could not accomodate African American guests, they assumed that Jim Crow custom was also Jim Crow law. When presented with the fact that there was no such law, segregationist custom gave way.
Of course, I am interested in any comments or thoughts.
Chris Joyner
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Michael Chesson writes:
I'm too young to have flown in the days of Jim Crow, but those who are interested, the next time in Richmond, can visit the Virginia Museum of Science, housed in what used to be Broad Street Station (officially "Union Station", which is what it says on the building's portico). I worked there for four summers while in college for the RF&P RR. My first bosses were former Red Caps, those positions having been done away with as I was told at the time. The enormous rotunda had room for a dozen pairs of huge double-backed benches, with women's and men's rooms to either side, including smaller waiting rooms in each. If you go into the building today, unless it has been reconfigured, head straight back, and just past the ticket counters at the rear quarters of the rotunda exterior, are what we used as storage rooms for various items. These tiny spaces were the colored restrooms/lounges for black men and women; to get to them, you had to go outside. Check it out.
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston omohundro@aol.com
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