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1867 | Annual report
Report on the Condition and Prospects of the Southern Railroad of Mississippi
This report details the financial and material state of the Southern Railroad Company in 1867.
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1867 | Document
Travel Accounting, Freedmen's Bureau
An accounting of Freedmen's Bureau-sponsored travel on the Virginia Central Railroad during the first half of 1867. Many emancipated African Americans traveled American railroads to old and new homes in the wake of the Civil War - the Freemen's Burueau paid for much of the travel.
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March 1, 1867 | Document
Travel Order Freedmen's Bureau
A Freedmen's Bureau travel voucher for 107 adults and 16 children (under 12) - "destitute freedpeople" traveling from Charlotte, North Carolina to Plaquemines, Louisiana. Generally, when large numbers of freedpeople travelled, it was under the terms of a labor contract.
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March 4, 1868
Catharine Brown, Complaint
Catharine Brown filed suit against the Washington, Alexandria and Georgetown Railroad in March 1868, arguing that a month earlier she was forcibly and violently ejected from the ladies car in Alexandria, Virginia, because of her color. She sought damages of $20,000 to pay for her medical care and to compensate for the injustice of segregation and discrimination. Brown's original petition focused on the railroad's duty as a common carrier and on Brown's first-class ticket which permitted her to ride in the ladies car.
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March 4, 1868 | Legal decision
Catharine Brown, Plaintiff's Prayers
A brief description of the judgement Catherine Brown hoped for as the jury decided her case.
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June 17, 1868 | Government document
Senate Report on Catharine Brown
The U.S. Senate Committee on the District of Columbia hears testimony about the forcible ejection of Catherine Brown from the Alexandria and Washington Railroad coach. Multiple witnesses are called and the circumstances of her removal are described.
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June 18, 1868 | Newspaper
The Washington and Alexandria Railroad Car
The railroad's segregation of Catharine Brown in February 1868 and her subsequent lawsuit against the company came to the immediate attention of Senator Charles Sumner (Massachusetts) and Senator Waitman Willey (West Virginia), both of whom sat on the Senate's District of Columbia Committee. At their urging, the Senate Committee launched an investigation into the affair, deposed dozens of witnesses, and issued a stinging report against the railroad company. Many of these same witnesses testified later in Brown's civil suit against the railroad company.
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December 16, 1868 | Letter
Letter from Samuel B. Reed to Wife and Family, December 16, 1868
In this letter from December 16, 1868, Samuel Reed writes to his wife and family describing the progress on grading and decribes the recent weather, which has been clear. Reed again complains about Durant's interference, noting that "this work would all have been finished long ago if my arrangements had not been interfered with."
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December 31, 1869 | Legal decision
Benjamin H. Hinds Deposition
Catharine Brown's attorneys deposed two white men who were on the train with Brown and witnessed her expulsion from the cars in Alexandria. Both lived in Maine and were deposed in December 1869. Benjamin Hinds' testimony was particularly significant because he described in detail the violence he witnessed, and because he knew Brown "since January 1866," perhaps from her work in the U.S. Capitol, and tried to intervene on her behalf.
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December 31, 1869 | Legal decision
Seth E. Beedy Deposition
Catharine Brown's attorneys deposed two white men who were on the train with Brown and witnessed her expulsion from the cars in Alexandria. Both lived in Maine and were deposed in December 1869. Seth Beedy was traveling with Benjamin Hinds, who knew and recognized "Kate" Brown. Beedy testified, "she was ejected by violence and that alone."
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April 28, 1870 | Legal decision
Draft of Catharine Brown, Evidence Given
Catharine Brown's case--Case No. 4582--was scheduled to go to trial in October 1868 in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, but was delayed because of various procedural motions by the railroad's attorneys. When these motions were denied, the case was tried over three days in March 1870. The all white jury rendered a verdict of guilty against the railroad company and awarded Brown $1,500 in damages. Then, the defendant railroad attorney's sought an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Here is their statement of argument, denying that the railroad used violence or made derogatory remarks. Furthermore, in denying Brown's claims, the railroad argued that there were distinctions between through and local passenger types of service, even on the Baltimore and Ohio, and that separate colored cars on local lines were run at the request of black passengers.
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1873 | Legal decision
Railroad Company v. Brown, 84 U.S. 17 Wall. 445 445 (1873)
In 1868, Catherine Brown, an African American woman, was ejected from the "ladies car" on the Washington, Alexandria, and Georgetown Railroad Company when traveling from Alexandria, Virginia, to the District of Columbia. Brown sued the rail company and the case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court - the first case addressing race and public transportation to appear before the Court. Although the legal status of the railroad under Congressional rulings that had applied to earlier iterations of the company became a basis for appeal, the rights of African Americans became the most notable outcome of the Supreme Court's decision for Brown in 1873.
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November 18, 1873 | Newspaper
DISCRIMINATION ON ACCOUNT OF COLOR ON RAILROADS
The New York Times reported on its front page the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Catharine Brown's case. The case aroused Republicans to reconsider the intent and purpose of the Congress in the midst of the Civil War because it turned on the railroad's Congressional charter from 1863 which clearly barred any discrimination on the basis of race or color. The railroad's main argument before the Supreme Court rested first on the idea that separate cars were customary, locally sanctioned, and equally accommodated, and second on the specious reasoning that because they carried colored passengers they had not violated the Congressional charter--colored persons were carried, just in a different car. The spirit of the Congress in 1863, the Court decided, suggested otherwise. The decision, however significant and newsworthy, was sorely limited in its application. Only a handful of railroads in the District of Columbia possessed such language in their originating charters.
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May 20, 1875 | Newspaper
Untitled [Grand Jury of the United States District Court Harrisonburg, Va., has found a bill of indictment]
The United States District Court at Harrisionburg, Virginia, hands down an indictment against the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad for the ejection of Annie Smith.
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April 21, 1877 | Newspaper
OUTRAGE IN ALABAMA
The ejection of a party of Alabama African American men and women from a first class car on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad is recounted in this letter from William Jenkins of Tuskeegee, Alabama.
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1882 | Book
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself
In this excerpt, Douglass relates the details of his dangerous escape from slavery. Traveling the railroad with borrowed papers, he flees to New York.
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March 26, 1883 | Newspaper
Georgia Letter
The plight of middle- and upper-class African Americans on Georgia railways and in public accommodations is briefly addressed in this report from Savannah, Georgia.
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March 31, 1883
Bishop Campbell's Indignity
The expulsion of an African American preacher from a Georgia rail car draws the ire of Philadelphia citizens.
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September 29, 1883 | Newspaper
Untitled [The railroads of Texas have been harassed]
A brief editorial statement about the conditions on Texas railroads and the lack of equal accomodations for African Americans and the need for a continued struggle against "American intolerance."
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September 10, 1886 | Newspaper
In The First-Class Car
The plight of three African American passengers on a Georgia railcar is recounted in this reprint from the Macon Telegraph.
