© 2006–2017
All Rights Reserved
William G. Thomas
Copyright Statement
October 13, 1863 | Letter
An engineer/machinist escaped from the South inquires about employment opportunities on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad.
November 19, 1863 | Letter
McCafferty notes damage done to Engine Rapidan by contrabands.
1864 | Letter
Passes for African American railroad employees requested of W. J. Stevens, Superintendent of the Military Railroad, Nashville.
January 29, 1864 | Letter
An inquiry about re-hiring a blacksmith for the military railroad.
February 18, 1864 | Letter
John Isom designates a black church in Nashville to serve as a copper and tin shop.
February 20, 1864 | Letter
E. Benjamin requests passes for black workers so that they may avoid impressment.
September 13, 1864 | Letter
J. M. Nash requests a guard to ensure that the African American engineer at the Lavergne station is not harassed or his work interfered with.
September 16, 1864 | Letter
George Rosser asks that small houses be built for the families of black railroad laborers.
October 16, 1864 | Letter
Labor bosses ask Adna Anderson to pressure the Quarter Master to approve the sale of winter clothing to contrabands.
December 16, 1868 | Letter
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."
March 19, 1841 | Newspaper
Northern railways continued to discriminate against African American passengers and are rebuked in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
April 2, 1841 | Newspaper
The maltreatment of African Americans by New England rail companies acting as "epidermis-aristocrats" draws an abolitionist's wrath as a Southerner weighs in on the merits of Southern rail travel.
November 6, 1841 | Newspaper
The plight of African Americans and their abolitionist supporters on New England railroads is addressed in depth in this passionate editorial.
June 18, 1868 | Newspaper
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.
November 18, 1873 | Newspaper
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.
May 20, 1875 | Newspaper
The United States District Court at Harrisionburg, Virginia, hands down an indictment against the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad for the ejection of Annie Smith.
April 21, 1877 | Newspaper
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.
March 26, 1883 | Newspaper
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.
September 29, 1883 | Newspaper
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."
September 10, 1886 | Newspaper
The plight of three African American passengers on a Georgia railcar is recounted in this reprint from the Macon Telegraph.
© 2006–2017
All Rights Reserved
William G. Thomas
Copyright Statement