Alexander Chiles v. Chesapeake Ohio Railway Company

• Decision Date: 31 May 1910
• Docket Number: No. 158,158
• Parties: J. ALEXANDER CHILES, Plff. in Err., v. CHESAPEAKE & OHIO RAILWAY COMPANY
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

218 U.S. 71

30 S.Ct. 667

54 L.Ed. 936

J. ALEXANDER CHILES, Plff. in Err.,

v CHESAPEAKE & OHIO RAILWAY COMPANY.

No. 158.

Argued April 18, 1910.

Decided May 31, 1910.

Messrs. J. Alexander Chiles, in propria persona, Albert S. White, W. L. Ricks, and B. E. Smith for plaintiff in error.

Messrs. John T. Shelby, Henry T. Wickham, and Henry Taylor, Jr., for defendant in error.

Mr. Justice McKenna delivered the opinion of the court:

Plaintiff in error is a colored man. He bought a first-class ticket from defendant in error, a corporation engaged in operating a line of railroad from the city of Louisville, state of Kentucky, and the city of Cincinnati, state of Ohio, to the city of Washington, District of Columbia. The ticket entitled him to ride from Washington to Lexington, Kentucky.

The train which he took at Washington did not run through to Lexington, and he changed to another train at Ashland, Kentucky, going into a car which, it is alleged, under the rules and regulations of defendant in error, was set apart exclusively for white persons. From this car he was required to remove to a car set apart exclusively for the transportation of colored persons.

He removed under protest, and only after a police officer had been summoned by defendant in error. Subsequently he brought this action in the circuit court of Fayette county, Kentucky. The case was tried to a jury, which rendered a verdict against him. A motion for a new trial was overruled. He appealed to the court of appeals of the state, and the action and judgment of the trial court were affirmed.

The assignments of error in this court depend upon the contention that plaintiff in error was an interstate passenger, and was entitled to a first-class passage from Washington to Lexington, and that therefore the act of defendant in error, in causing him to be removed from the car at Ashland, was a violation of his rights, and subjected the railroad company to damages.

The court of appeals of the state made the case turn on a narrow ground; to wit, the right which, it was decided, a railroad company had 'to establish such rules and regulations as will require white and colored passengers although they may be interstate, to occupy separate compartments upon the train.' The court, however, said that there could be no discrimination in the accommodations.

The court found the facts of the removal of plaintiff, and the character of the car to which he was required to remove, as follows:

'This Lexington train is made up of four coaches: the first, and the one nearest the engine, being a combined baggage, mail, and express car; the second is a passenger coach, divided by board partitions into three compartments; one of these compartments, located in the end of the car, is set apart for colored passengers; the middle compartment is for the use of colored passengers who smoke; and the end compartment is for the accommodation of white persons who smoke; the third car is a passenger coach intended for the use of white ladies and gentlemen; the fourth car is a sleeping car that runs through from Washington to Lexington. Appellant, when he attempted to get on the Lexington train, was told by the brakeman to go in the colored apartment. This he declined to do, and walked in and took a seat in the third coach, set apart for the exclusive use of white passengers. In a few moments the conductor came in and asked the appellant, in obedience to a rule of the company, to go forward in the apartment set apart for colored passengers, but he refused to do so, stating that he had bought a through first-class ticket from Washington to Lexington, and was an interstate passenger who knew his rights, and that the separate-coach law of Kentucky did not apply to him, and declared his intention of retaining the seat he occupied. Thereupon the conductor summoned a policeman, who also requested appellant to go in the other car, and, upon his refusal, he was informed that he would be compelled to leave the car in which he was seated. Appellant, yet insisting upon his right to remain in the car in which he was, followed the policeman into the colored passenger coach.' [125 Ky. 302, 101 S. W. 386.]

The court further said:

'There is really no material issue of fact involved in the case. No force or violence, or rude or oppressive conduct, was employed by the agents of appellee in removing appellant from the car in which he was seated to the car set apart for colored persons. And except that the car into which he was removed is divided by partitions into three compartments, it was substantially equal in quality, convenience, and accommodation to the car in which he first seated himself, and the compartment into which appellant was directed to go was clean and ample for his accommodation, and equipped with the same convenience as the other passenger coach on the train from which he was ejected.'

In this the court came to the same conclusion as the jury. Plaintiff in error insists that this conclusion put out of view his rights as an interstate commerce passenger. Both courts ignored such rights, he contends, the trial court, in refusing instructions that were requested and in its ruling on the trial, and the court of appeals, in affirming the judgment which was based upon the verdict.

We need not set out the instructions nor the rulings. The complaint of the action of the court rests upon the contention that, as against an interstate passenger, the regulation of the company in providing different cars for the white and colored races is void. There is a statute of Kentucky which requires railroad companies to furnish separate coaches for white and colored passengers, but the court of appeals of the state put the statute out of consideration, declaring that it had no application to interstate trains, and defendant in error does not rest its defense upon that statute, but upon its rules and regulations. Plaintiff in error makes some effort to keep the statute in the case...