Jurisprudence Amid Legal Ambiguity in The Transition to Jim Crow: Black Women versus Railway Companies

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Abstract

Before the cementation of Jim Crow laws, free black women tried to gain access to upper-class "Ladies Cars" by asserting their status as "ladies" upon the railroad, with some success. In this project, I am studying the legal ambiguity around where to place black women on the train car between the end of the Civil War and the creation of the NAACP. There is unfortunately surprisingly little sociological research studying the period of legal ambiguity before judicial precedent has been established. In speaking of legal ambiguity, I am discussing the sometimes vague language of legislative directives for the interpretation, implementation, and enforcement of a given law, drawing on Edelman’s definitions (1991/1992). What would the new rights to “equal protection” and “privileges and immunities” guaranteed by the 14th amendment look like in practice? I examine the ways by which black female plaintiff's lawyers attempted to claim for their clients an upper-class identity, and with it, a right to upper-class space in railroad cars; I also examine how these classed and gendered frames phased out of courtroom arguments as Jim Crow segregation cemented the practice of explicitly segregating railroad cars by race. The ambiguity around the class position of black women following Emancipation presented an opportunity for lawyers, and this ambiguity was manipulated by lawyers on both sides to win court cases. However, by the end of the 19th century, segregated cars eliminated the grey area around where black women could situate themselves in the vehicle. Court rulings became increasingly inflexible; black women could no longer fight to fit into the cultural conception of ladylikeness as white society determined them to be in a specifically segregated class and therefore must occupy a specifically segregated space. Thus marked the end of a period of legal ambiguity.

Author

• Hannah Ingersoll