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Separation of Postal Clerks

A special question has arisen out of the Federal postal cars on which both white and colored clerks are employed. At present, they are obliged to sleep in the same cars, and at the terminals of long runs dormitories are provided for them, but without any race separation. The post-office department has said that such regulation is beyond its control.[56] Thus the matter stands, with a growing discontent on the part of the white postal clerks to be so intimately associated with the colored clerks.

The "Jim Crow" laws in the South, so far as the railroads are concerned, are very nearly complete. Missouri, as has been said, is the only one of the Southern States which has not, by express enactment, separated the races.


SEPARATION OF PASSENGERS IN STREET CARS

The third division of the subject is the separation of races in street cars. This is a field of much more active legislation than any of the preceding, in which much has been done recently and in which much more is likely to be done.

Of the thirteeen separate coach laws just considered, six of them—those of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas—except street railroads from their application. Georgia and Oklahoma alone make their laws all inclusive, embracing electric and street cars as well as railroad coaches. It is safe to assume that the laws of the other States refer only to railroad coaches.