separate coach
law by carriers, which is claimed to produce the discrimination. The
separate coach provisions of Oklahoma[46] apply to transportation
wholly intrastate in absence of a different construction by State
courts and do not contravene the commerce clause of the Federal court.
The court held, however, that so much of the Oklahoma separate coach
law as permits carriers to provide sleeping cars, dining cars, and
chair cars for white persons, and to provide no similar accommodations
for Negroes, denies the latter the equal protection of the laws
guaranteed by the Constitution.

The most recent case, that of the _South Covington and Cincinnati
Street Railway, Plaintiff in error_ v. _Commonwealth of Kentucky_
shows another step in the direction of complete surrender to caste.
This company was a Kentucky corporation, each of the termini of the
railroad of which was in Kentucky. The complainant hoped to prevent
the segregation of passengers carried from Ohio into Kentucky. The
decision was that a Kentucky street railway may be required by statute
of that State to furnish either separate cars or separate compartments
in the same car for white and Negro passengers although its principal
business is the carriage of passengers in interstate commerce between
Cincinnati, Ohio, and Kentucky across the Ohio River. Such a
requirement affects interstate commerce only incidentally, and does
not subject it to unreasonable demands. In other words, this
inconvenience to the carrier is not very much and the humiliation and
burden which it entails upon persons of color thus segregated should
not concern the court, although they are supposed to be citizens of
the United States.

Justice Day dissented and Justices Van DeVanter and Putney concurred
on the ground that the attachment of a different car upon the Kentucky
side on so short a journey would burden interstate commerce as to cost
and in the practical operation of the traffic. The provision for a
separate compartment for the use of only interstate Negro passengers
would lead to confusion and discrimination. The same interstate
transportation would be subject to conflicting regulation in the two
States in which it is conducted. They believed that it imposed an
unreasonable burden and according to the dissentients was, therefore,
void.

JUSTICE IN THE COURTS.

One of the most important constitutional rights denied the Negroes is
that of justice in the courts. In as much as