Brown v. Memphis & C. R. Co.

• Decision Date: 30 October 1880
• Citation: 5 F. 499
• Parties: BROWN v. MEMPHIS & C.R. CO.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Tennessee

5 F. 499

BROWN v. MEMPHIS & C.R. CO.

United States Circuit Court, W.D. Tennessee.

October 30, 1880

Inge &amp Chandler, for plaintiff.

Humes &amp Posten, for defendant.

This was a common-law action for the wrongful exclusion of the plaintiff, a colored woman, from the ladies' car of the defendant's train, upon her refusal to take a seat in the smoking car. At the time of her exclusion the plaintiff held a first-class ticket over the defendant's road from Corinth, Mississippi, to Memphis, Tennessee, and her behavior while in the car was lady-like and inoffensive.

The defendant pleaded that the plaintiff was a woman of color and that the company had a regulation excluding persons of color from the ladies' car, but providing equal accommodations in another car, which she refused to accept. This plea, however, was subsequently withdrawn, because the defendant as a matter of fact made no distinction as to color on its cars. After the withdrawal of this plea the court refused to entertain the question of color, and excluded it altogether from the jury, and charged that the case as to be tried precisely as if the plaintiff were a white woman excluded under similar circumstances. The defendant also pleaded that the plaintiff was a notorious and public courtesan, addicted to the use of profane language and offensive habits of conduct in public places; that the ladies' car was set apart exclusively for the use of genteel ladies of good character and modest deportment, from which the plaintiff was rightfully excluded because of her bad character.

It also appeared that an existing statute of the state of Tennessee (Act of March 24, 1875, c. 130, Sec. 1, p. 216) contained the following provision:

'The rule of the common law giving a right of action to any person excluded from any hotel or public means of transportation, or place of amusement, is hereby abrogated; and hereafter no keeper of any hotel or public house, or carrier of passengers for hire, or conductors, drivers, or employes of such carrier or keeper, shall be bound or under any obligation to entertain, carry, or admit any person whom he shall for any reason whatever choose not to entertain, carry, or admit to his house, hotel, carriage, or means of transportation, or place of amusement; nor shall any right exist in favor of any such persons so refused admission; but the right of such keepers of hotels and public houses, carriers of passengers, and keepers of places of amusement, and their employes, to control the access and admission or exclusion of persons to or from their public houses, means of transportation, and places of amusement, shall be as perfect and complete as that of

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