Pullman Ouster

Those who rode in Pullmans down the east coast of Florida on the afternoon of July 18, 1926, were hot and drowsy. Most of them slouched and slumbered in their seats; others gazed, stupidly, at real estate advertisements in newpapers. At Palatka, Fla., on the Atlantic Coast Line Railway, husky voices suddenly echoed through the Pullman steel. Passengers jerked themselves out of their various shades of somnolence, as the train stopped. Curious, they got their noses dirty trying to look through the screens. They heard one Blanche S. Brookins, Negress, snorting and scolding: "Yoh all let me 'lone, yoh whaht trash, I gotta ticket!"* Going outside, they saw the irate Negress and her baggage being turned over to an officer at the station. The train rolled away and the passengers drowsed again. Mrs. Brookings spent the night in the county jail and was fined $500 for violation of Florida's "Jim Crow" law, which forbids Negroes to use railroad accommodations set apart for whites. Now, as everyone knows, Clarence Darrow and Arthur Garfield Hays, shrewd lawyers, are friends of all races; in fact, in 1925, they defended the source of all races at the famed "monkey trial" in Dayton, Tenn. Mr. Darrow has saved the lives of two young Jews, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold; Mr. Hays has defended the civil right of many a Negro. Last week the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People announced that these two potent champions would press the suit of Blanche S. Brookins against the Pullman Co. and the Atlantic Coast Line Railway for damages of $25,000. The Negress charges that the defendants subjected her to "insult, mortification and injury to her nervous system and general health"; that she was a passenger in interstate commerce (having bought through accommodations from New York to Orlando, Fla.), and therefore not subject to Florida law.

*This is one version of Mrs. Brookins' utterances. The other is that Mrs. Brookins was mannerly; that the conductor was loud, vulgar, abusive.