be construed as not applying to them."    The Court even suggested to the railroads that
segregation might be a good idea.

If it be necessary for the comfort and safety of the passengers, and especially for the
preservation of order, in portions of the State where the two races are anything like
equally divided in numbers, or the feeling between the races is such as to make it
desireable to keep them separated, the carriers themselves have full authority to do so as
we have seen above. They could undoubtedly adopt such regulations, even on inter-state
trains, as would relieve them and their passengers from all danger and inconvenience on
account of the two races travelling together, by having separate cars or compartments on
trains doing local business."

Thus, despite Hart's victory, the railroads as a practical matter continued to operate segregated

trains.

To fight the railroad segregation law, the black community, led by the Maryland Suffrage
League and the Afro-American Ledger, organized a boycott of the railroads.100 The railroads had
made a practice of giving a rebate to churches who chartered railroad cars for annual meetings.
This rebate was a significant base for the support of the church, and the boycott deprived the
churches of this much needed revenue. After eight months, the demand for revenues overcame
the principle of resistance to the law, and the boycott collapsed.101 Segregation in railroad trains
became entrenched in the state.

In 1908 the segregation laws were extended to require separate toilets and separate
sleeping cabins on steamships.102 A new statute was adopted to apply to electric railways
operating more than twenty miles beyond an incorporated town (the impact of the twenty mile
rule was to exempt municipal transit in Baltimore from the requirement). Since many such
railways had only one car, the statute provided for designation of separate seats. A seat for two
passengers was defined as a separate seat. "When the seats in any car, coach or compartment
shall all be occupied, but not filled, and the increased number of passengers cannot be
accommodated with separate seats, the conductor ... is hereby authorized to assign passengers of
the same color to the vacant seats, and he can, with the permission and consent of the occupant,
assign a passenger of the other color to the unoccupied seats, but not otherwise." All the
segregation statutes also contained express prohibitions against "discrimination."

In 1914 Ashbie Hawkins and George McMechen represented James Jenkins who was
prosecuted for refusing to occupy a seat designated for colored passengers on the railway. The
court upheld the 1908 statute, construing it to apply only to intrastate passengers. State v.
Jenkins. 124 Md. 376 (1914).

E.        Housing

The next battlefront was in housing. George F. McMechen, a graduate of Yale Law
School who was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1904 and became a partner of Ashbie Hawkins,

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