of the Southern States they temporarily enjoyed the rights
guaranteed them by the Constitution. As there set in a reaction
against the support of the reconstructed governments as administered
by corrupt southerners and interlopers, the support which the United
States Government had given this first effort in America toward actual
democracy was withdrawn and the undoing of the Negro as a citizen was
easily effected throughout the South by general intimidation and
organized mobs known as the Ku-Klux Klan.

One of the first rights denied the Negro by these successful
reactionaries was the unrestricted use of common carriers. Standing
upon its former record, however, the court had sufficient precedents
to continue as the impartial interpreter of the laws guaranteeing all
persons civil and political equality. In _New Jersey Steam Navigation
Company_ v. _Merchants Bank_[7] the court speaking through Justice
Nelson took high ground in the defence of the free and unrestricted
use of common carriers, a right frequently denied the Negroes after
the Civil War. The court said that a common carrier is "in the
exercise of a sort of public office and has public duties to perform
from which he should not be permitted to exonerate himself without
assent of the parties concerned." This doctrine was upheld in _Munn_
v. _Illinois_[8] and in _Olcott_ v. _Supervisors_[9] when it was
decided that railroads are public highways established under the
authority of the State for the public use; and that they are none the
less public highways, because controlled and owned by private
corporations; that it is a part of the function of government to make
and maintain highways for the convenience of the public; that no
matter who is agent or what is the agency, the function performed is
_that of the State_; that although the owners may be private
companies, they may be compelled to permit the public to use these
works in the manner in which they can be used; "Upon these grounds
alone," continues the opinion, "have courts sustained the investiture
of railroad corporations with the States right of eminent domain, or
the right of municipal corporations, under legislative authority, to
assess, levy, and collect taxes to aid in the construction of
railroads."[10] Jurists in this country and in England had also held
that inasmuch as the innkeeper is engaged in a quasi public
employment, the law gives him special privileges and he is charged
with certain du