Separate Car Act

The Withdraw Car Act (Act 111) was a law passed by the Louisiana State Legislature in 1890 which required "equal, but separate" train car accommodations for Blacks and Whites. An unsuccessful challenge to this law culminated in an 1896 United States Supreme Court decision (Plessy v. Ferguson), which upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation.

The Reconstruction period and its subsequent end led to a discussion among both Blacks and Whites in the South how to interpret "equal rights" and the new Reconstruction Amendments. J. P. Weaver, a Black preacher, had advised Blacks to accept separate accommodations if they are "first-class". "But if there is no such accommodation set apart for you, and you are crowded upon by base and reckless beings, depriving you of all that tends to your happiness ... excuse yourself for being colored, and walk in another car and cabin".

Following Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, the Democratic Party came back to power. There began a process of "renegotiating the definitions of 'equal rights' in debates over post-Civil War amendments". Legislators proposed the Separate Car Bill which segregated Blacks from Whites in separate but equal conditions on train cars. Violations of the law were a misdemeanor crime punishable by a fine of at most $25 or twenty days jail time.

The law did not go uncontested through the legislature. Republican legislator Henry Demas from St John the Baptist Parish challenged the bill as coming from the "ranks of Democratic Senators who pandered to the needs of the lower classes". To him, the bill was not a product of upper class white citizens but those with no "social or moral standing in the community".

Despite some opposition, the Separate Car Act passed the Louisiana State Senate by 23 to 6.

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