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Missouri-Kansas Texas Railroad Company of Texas. Section 1. Be it enacted by the legislature of the state of texas: every railway company, street car company and interurban railway company, lessee, manager, or receiver thereof doing business in this state as a common carrier of passengers for hire, shall provide separate coaches or compartments, as hereinafter provided, for the accommodation of white and negro passengers. [Caption title and first lines of text].

[N.p., but Dallas? ca. 1910s.] Broadside printed on thick card stock, 12.75” x 8.5”. CONDITION: Foxed and dampstained, light edge wear, slightly warped. Still very good.

An unrecorded broadside printed by the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company (MKT), containing the text of the state of Texas’ 1907 separate cars law, mandating “separate but equal” train cars for Black passengers.

Despite an anti-segregation statute passed during Radical Reconstruction in 1871, Jim Crow laws were quickly reintroduced to Texas in the late nineteenth century. The first separate cars law was passed in 1889 and applied only to railways; additional laws were passed in 1891 (adding penalties for conductors as well as passengers, increasing punishments, and requiring public signage), upheld by Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896, and extended in 1907 (applying the provisions of the law to streetcars and “interurban railways”). Segregation laws for public transit in Texas passed frequently alongside numerous other Jim Crow statutes, steadily increasing in scope and forcefulness into the late 1950s.

This broadside, printed on thick card stock and likely at one time posted in an MKT depot or train car, prints the text of the 1907 law. Section 1 states in full:

BE IT ENACTED by the LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS: Every Railway Company, Street Car Company and Interurban Railway Company, Lessee, manager, or Receiver thereof doing business in this State as a common carrier of passengers for hire, shall provide separate coaches or compartments, as hereinafter provided, for the accommodation of white and negro passengers, which separate coaches or compartments shall be equal in all points of comfort and convenience.

The eight following sections of the act define the term “Negro,” require clearly posted signage, establish a fine of $100 to $1000 per trip for noncompliant railroads, a misdemeanor charge and $5 to $25 fine for noncompliant passengers, allow exceptions for railroad employees (partially revoked in 1914), require the printing of broadsides such as this, and grant conductors the authority to deny service or eject passengers based on race.

Conceived after the Civil War as the Southern Branch of the Union Pacific and charged with connecting Fort Riley to Fort Worth, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad was the first to enter Texas from the north and became one of the largest railway networks in the south-central United States. It continued operations into the 1980s, when it merged with the Union Pacific.

We locate no other surviving copy.

A scarce piece of Texas railway and civil rights ephemera, although presumably posted in every MKT rail car and depot in Texas in the early 1900s.

Item #8969

Price: $2,750.00

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