Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture)

278 Pages·2010·4.21 MB·English

by  Blair L. M. Kelley

RIGHT TO RIDE
THE JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN SERIES
IN AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE
Waldo E. Martin Jr. and Patricia Sullivan, editors
RIGHT TO RIDE
STREETCAR BOYCOTTS AND AFRICAN AMERICAN
CITIZENSHIP IN THE ERA OF PLESSY V. FERGUSON
Blair L. M. Kelley
The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill
∫ 2010 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved. Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker and set in Merlo and Serifa by
Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America. The paper in
this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Pro-
duction Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. The Univer-
sity of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kelley, Blair Murphy, 1973–
Right to ride : streetcar boycotts and African American citizenship in the
era of Plessy v. Ferguson / Blair L. M. Kelley. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (John Hope Franklin series in African American history and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8078-3354-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-8078-7101-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. African Americans—Civil rights—History. 2. Civil rights movements—United
States—History. 3. Segregation in transportation—United States—History.
4. Boycotts—United States—History. 5. United States—Race relations—
History. 6. New Orleans (La.)—Race relations—History. 7. Richmond (Va.)—
Race relations—History. 8. Savannah (Ga.)—Race relations—History. i. Title.
e185.61.k355 2010
323.1196%073—dc22
2009050000
cloth 14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1
paper 14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1
FOR JULIA
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1
1 new york 15
The Antebellum Roots of Segregation and Dissent
2 the color line and the ladies’ car 33
Segregation on Southern Rails before Plessy
3 our people, our problem? 51
Plessy and the Divided New Orleans
4 where are our friends? 87
Crumbling Alliances and New Orleans Streetcar Boycott
5 who’s to blame? 117
Maggie Lena Walker, John Mitchell Jr., and the Great Class Debate
6 negroes everywhere are walking 139
Work, Women, and the Richmond Streetcar Boycott
7 battling jim crow’s buzzards 165
Betrayal and the Savannah Streetcar Boycott
8 bend with unabated protest 195
On the Meaning of Failure
Notes 201 Bibliography 233 Index 247
A section of illustrations appears after p. 115.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Acknowledgments are a moment when an author is able to acknowledge
that most of what often felt like a very solitary enterprise is actually the
result of thousands of pages read by friends, mentors, and colleagues and
hundreds of moments of kindness and critique, arguments and heart-felt
conversations. I was nervous about writing my own, worried about accu-
rately sharing my gratitude with those who have helped along the way. It is
my hope that these few pages will begin to express the debt that I owe to so
many people who believed in my e√orts.
Throughout this project I have received research support. I am grateful
to the institutions that provided financial support, including the Duke
Endowment Fellowship; the Anne Firor Scott Award from Women’s Stud-
ies at Duke University; the University of Notre Dame’s Erskine Peters Dis-
sertation Year Fellowship; a fellowship from the National Endowment of
the Humanities, which designated Right to Ride a We the People project;
and research funding from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at
North Carolina State University. I owe a debt of gratitude to many of my
colleagues in the Department of History at North Carolina State University
for their support. In particular, I thank Gail O’Brien for her close reading of
the manuscript early in the process. I am especially thankful to the commu-
nity of scholars who participated in the National Endowment for the Hu-
manities Institute on African American Civil Rights Struggles in the Twen-
tieth Century, hosted by the Department of African and African American
Studies at Harvard University in the summer of 2006.