I was looking at a website that had menus scanned in from some of the classic trains of the 30s-60s era. Among them were a couple of trains that plied routes to Florida from the North. Now I understand that in long-distance buses, passengers were expected to switch seats by race at whichever border it was where segregation became mandatory. How did it work for sleeping cars? Dining cars? Were there separate mealtimes for “white” and “colored?” What if, god forbid, you were the lone black person taking first-class accommodation? Or did that never happen because even if you could afford it, the humiliation involved was too great?
My father, during his undergraduate years at the University of North Dakota, had a summer job in Florida and travelled there every summer. But he always drove (generally 24 hours straight), ate only what he could get out of a 7-11, and since it was roughly 1960 some of the more obvious indicia of the Peculiar Institution were receding. Moreover, his job was in Melbourne, which was far enough south in Florida that there probably had never been that much visible segregation anyway. (In fact, he doesn’t remember seeing many black people at all, and as a North Dakota boy he’d probably have noticed.)
I did some searching on the point, but quickly bogged down in legal decisions, freedom rides, and other more optimistic touchpoints from our history. What was it like for those who had to live it?
Nearly every autobiographical sketch that I have read by a Tuskeegee airman who had grown up in Illinois or Michigan mentions their startled consternation at being unceremoniously rousted out of their seat and told to move to the colored car. From that perpective, it worked the same way that bus rides worked.
This page from the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity alludes to a “curtain” in the dining car. They seem to have simply partitioned it.
The Minnesota Public Radio site quotes various old newspaper stories, including this one from the end of December, 1899, in the Pioneer Press:
This site, listing various cases of Constitutional law, includes
indicating that the railroads were liable to attempt to simply not provide those services to blacks (but that the Supreme Court ordered them to provide “separate but equal” accommodations).
Some cars were physcially divided into 2 sections; Steamtown in Scranton, PA, has a combination car (passenger/baggage) with segregated seating (I saw the outside, but didn’t get to see the inside since it is being restored - this was called a ‘Jim Crow[e]’ car).
I have also seen plans of passenger coached which did have a wall between sections (the ‘white’ section seemed bigger by half), each with their own bathrooms.
There was a PBS documentary a few years back about the influx of blacks to Chicago early to mid-last century. They mentioned that travelling south, there would be a stop in Indiana just before crossing the river into Kentucky, where segregation was implemented prior to entering the South. I assume it worked the opposite travelling north, but probably the good seats were already taken by then.