![]() ![]() The institution of slavery clearly placed African Americans at the bottom rung of society and established white supremacy.īut following the war, Congress passed three new amendments to the Constitution abolishing slavery extending citizenship rights to African Americans giving Black men the right to vote and guaranteeing all African Americans equal protection under the law. From white Southerners’ perspective, there had been no need. However, like the ex-Confederate states, Kentucky had also been transformed by the war and emancipation.īefore the Civil War, there had been no state-enforced separation of African Americans and whites in public places in the South. As a result, it was not subject to the federal Reconstruction policies that sought to reshape Southern state governments and improve the status of the newly freed slaves. A period of Reconstruction was now underway as the federal government attempted to rebuild the former Confederate states economically, politically and socially and rejoin them to the Union.Īlthough it had been a slave state, Kentucky had remained loyal to the Union during the war. The Civil War had ended just five years earlier. The streetcar protest in Louisville occurred during a time of tremendous upheaval in the South. The officers quickly arrested the three men for disorderly conduct and hauled them off to jail. The crowd seemed ready to erupt in violence just as three police officers arrived on the scene. Still, they refused.īy now, five trolleys had backed up on the tracks behind the halted car. He said he’d return the men’s fares if they got off the trolley immediately. The superintendent of the Central Passenger Company came running up to the car. “We’ll pay your fines!” “We’ll see you through this!” “Don’t budge a step!” If the drivers attacked them again, they were ready to fight back. They remained calm and composed, but now the men clenched stones in their fists. In the midst of the commotion, Pearce and the Fox brothers climbed back onto the car. Some men grabbed chunks of hardened mud and began hurling them at the trolley car and yelling threats at the drivers. The rough treatment of the men awakened the crowd in front of the chapel from its silence. Then they dragged them off the trolley into the street. He sent a message to the streetcar company’s central office that trouble was brewing and called out to other trolley drivers for assistance.īefore long, a cluster of white drivers surrounded the three Black men and began kicking them and shouting racial slurs. Nor was he going to proceed on his route. ![]() The driver wasn’t about to argue the question of Black citizens’ rights with Robert Fox. Now a hush fell over the crowd as they waited to see what would happen. Nearly 300 African American men and women had gathered in front of Quinn Chapel that afternoon to show their support for what they hoped would lead to a legal decision striking down segregation on public carriers. Black men were usually only permitted to ride on the small front platform with the driver, and on some lines, they couldn’t ride at all. Under the policies, Black women were allowed to ride the trolleys, but on some lines, they were forced to take seats in the rear of the car. In fact, the trio’s actions that day had been pre-arranged by Louisville’s Black community to test the legality of the streetcar companies’ segregation policies. ![]() Robert Fox, an elderly mortician, quietly replied that he and his companions - his brother Samuel, who was also his business partner, and Horace Pearce, who worked for both brothers - had the same right to ride as whites. The driver, too, demanded that they leave. It was a challenge to the entire social order.Īs soon as the men entered the trolley car, a white passenger named John Russell told them to get off. And for Black city dwellers, riding a trolley was no ordinary act. It would have been a routine occurrence - three men catching a ride home after church on a Sunday afternoon - had the passengers been white residents of Louisville. When the trolley stopped, each climbed aboard the near-empty car, dropped a coin in the fare box and took a seat. On October 30, 1870, three men outside the Quinn Chapel in Louisville, Kentucky, made their way toward the trolley stand at Tenth and Walnut on the Central Passenger line. ![]()
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