mericans, we have
lost faith in the courts, and Heaven knows we have had abundant reason
for so doing, but there's hope. They have too often and too long
listened to the clamors of public opinion, put too much faith and credit
in the utterances of latter-day journalism, coloring their opinions to
suit the one, or to escape the criticism of the other. Under the
pernicious doctrine of public policy and in fortifying that undefined
and indefinable legal notion of police power, courts have wiped aside
Constitutional limitations, and disregarded what the profession at least
had learned to consider as almost fixed precedents of the law, but even
with all these defects admitted, there remains the startling truth that
to these governmental agencies we must look for the righting of our
wrongs and the redress of our grievances. We have shunned the courts too
often in our temporal affairs, fearing, it seems, further adverse
decisions, or waiting a proper adjustment at some other forum. In my own
State it might now be compulsory upon you, or any other decent
self-respecting person of the race, in travelling from here to New York
or elsewhere in the North, to ride in the so-called "Jim-Crow" cars
provided by an indulgent Maryland legislature for Negro patrons of its
railroads, had it not have been for a member of the Faculty of this
institution. William H. H. Hart knew that legislation of that character
was an attempt to restrict interstate traffic, and the Court of Appeals
of Maryland agreed with him. The case of State vs. Hart, reported in 100
Md. at page 595, is a landmark in our Maryland law, and under its
influence "Jim-Crow" cars have almost disappeared from the railroads of
our State. Another distinguished member of the Faculty of Howard
University, but of another department, in travelling over the railroads
in the eastern part of our State last fall, discovered that the
compartments provided by the roads for their colored passengers, in
point of cleanliness, appointment, and convenience, were notably
inferior to those furnished others. He complained to the Public Service
Commission and, after a full hearing, the Commission passed a decree
requiring these railroads to furnish accommodations to its colored
passengers equal in all respects to that furnished others. This is
exactly what the Separate-Car Law provides, but it is exactly what the
railroads had never intended to furnish and, without the complaint of
Professor T. W. T