ties and responsibilities to the public. The public
nature of his employment would then forbid him from discriminating
against any person asking admission, on account of the race or color
of that person.[11]

In the _Slaughter House Cases_[12] and _Strauder_ v. _West
Virginia_[13] the United States Supreme Court held that since slavery
was the moving or principal cause of the adoption of the Thirteenth
Amendment, and since that institution rested wholly upon the
inferiority, as a race, of those held in bondage, their freedom
necessarily involved immunity from, and protection against all
discrimination against them, because of their race in respect of such
civil rights as belong to freemen of other races. Congress, therefore,
under its present express power to enforce that amendment by
appropriate legislation, might enact laws to protect that people
against deprivation, _because of their race_, of any civil rights
granted to other freemen in the same States; and such legislation may
be of a direct and primary character, operating upon States, their
officers and agents, and also upon, at least, such individuals and
corporations as exercise public functions and wield power and
authority under the State.

The State was conceded the power to regulate rates, fares of
passengers and freight, and upon these grounds it might regulate the
entire management of railroads in matters affecting the convenience
and safety of the public, such as regulating speed, compelling stops
of prescribed length at stations and prohibiting discriminations and
favoritisms. The position taken here is that these corporations are
actual agents of the State and what the State permits them to do is an
act of the State. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments made the
Negro race a part of the public and entitled to share in the control
and use of public utilities. Any restriction in the use of these
utilities would deprive the race of its liberty; for "personal liberty
consists," says Blackstone, "in the power of locomotion of changing
situation, of removing one's person to whatever places one's own
inclination may direct, without restraint, unless by due course of
law."

In several decisions the court had held that the purpose of the
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments was to raise the Negro race from
that condition of inferiority and servitude in which most of them had
previously stood, into perfect equality of civil rights with all other
persons