Although blacks were able to vote and to testify, they were not included in juries. The
statute on admission to the bar was reenacted with its requirement that applicants be white males.
The criminal statute requiring fathers to support their illegitimate children applied only to the
children of white women. Allocations of revenues, particularly support for public schools,
heavily favored whites. The schools provided were segregated, and places of public
accommodation generally gave second class treatment to blacks.

Beyond the formal barriers mentioned, the informal barriers created by prejudice and
economic self interest were formidable. For example, white laborers at skilled trades attempted
to keep black workers out. In 1865, a major strike, accompanied by violence and intimidation,
was launched by white "caulkers" to drive blacks from the shipbuilding trade - which had been
predominantly black in the years before the war. The response of the black community was the
creation of the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company. Among its founders was
the black labor leader Isaac Myers.4 But black businesses faced severe problems of lack of
capital in the black community and lack of patronage from the white community, except in
restricted areas such as catering, hauling and barbershops. Racially exclusive unions forced
blacks from most of the skilled trades as European immigrants were recruited for such tasks.5

hi the three decades following the adoption of the civil war amendments, some, but not
all, of the remaining racial discriminations in the Maryland statutes were invalidated or repealed.
At the same time, the law condoned the rise of private acts of segregation.

C.        Transportation

The Baltimore City Passenger Railway furnished the city with transportation. Under
company policy, blacks were required to stand on an uncovered platform outside the covered
portion of the railway car. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to challenge this policy
immediately after the civil war. Finally, in 1870 Alexander Thompson, a black citizen from New
York, filed suit to recover damages against the railway for ejection from the car. Archibald
Stirling, Jr., the radical leader, was one of his counsel in the suit brought before Judge William
Fell Giles in the diversity jurisdiction of the federal circuit court. The railway company
demurred to the complaint. After hearing argument from counsel for the company on the
demurrer, Giles told Stirling that he need not even argue the case. Giles denied the demurrer,
saying that although separate seating would be permissible, there was no justification for a
common carrier to treat passengers who paid the same fare to inferior seating.6

The Company responded immediately by providing separate cars - limiting blacks to
those cars marked as permitting colored passengers. In February of 1871, John W. Fields, a
black barber visiting Baltimore from Virginia, was ejected from a car that did not have such a
sign. He responded by filing suit in United States circuit court. The case was tried before Judge
Giles and Judge Hugh Lennox Bond appointed to the federal circuit court by Grant as a reward
for his conduct during the Civil War and on the bench in Baltimore). Trial testimony revealed
that the railway permitted whites to ride in all cars, regardless of the sign. Bond charged the jury

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