Atlantic Coast Lines - The Champion

[Anonymous]

Can anyone remember if the Champion was segregated? if so, when did it change. Were the dining cars and sleeping lounges available to blacks. I'm writing a paper on this period and need to know when blacks were able to use the sleeping and dining accomodations. My Mom travelled the ACL Champion in the early 40's and she remembers the cars being segregated. Also, I need to find a photo the ACL Champion dining car can you direct me to a source.

Thank You.

[Anonymous]

Southern states required segregated operation into the 1950s. I believe I read in Passenger Train Journal that towards the end of segregation, the trains were segregated northbound but not southbound because southbound passenger assignments were mostly made in the North. I don't know if coach segregation was finally ended by a Supreme Court decision, the Interstate Commerce Commission, or perhaps the public accommodations provisions of one of civil rights act of the 1960s.

The pre-war Florida streamliners had coach dormitory baggage cars whose coach seats were set aside for blacks (I know this was the case for the Silver Meteor and the Champion; I think this was also the case with the Chicago coach streamliners).

Dining cars were segregated until 1949-50 when, at the direction of President Truman, the ICC issued an order abolishing segregation. Until then in Seaboard practice (I assume Coast Line practice was similar), two tables "nearest the buffet" (closest to the kitchen?) were reserved for blacks from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. and were curtained off when occupied by blacks. Whites would be seated at them only if the rest of the tables were full and no blacks were using them. If black passengers entered the dining car while white passengers were using the reserved tables, they would be told they would be called when the tables reserved for blacks had been vacated by the white passengers and offered the option of being served in their coach or Pullman if they preferred not to wait.

The only case in which blacks were allowed in the rest of the dining car was when the black was traveling with whites (i.e., a nurse caring for the white family's children). In that case the black passenger would be seated at a whites-only table with the family he or she was travelling with ... and no one else would be seated at that table even if there were seats available and passengers waiting to be seated.

I have no idea about Pullman lounge space. However in 1941 the Supreme Court interpreted the Interstate Commerce Act as requiring Pullman to provide equal accommodations for blacks even if that meant integrating cars for which there was too little black traffic to justify a separate car (Mitchell vs. U.S.). I suppose this could also have meant equal access to sleeper lounge space which was Pullman-operated.

Most of this information is from "By Streamliner from New York to Florida" by Joseph Welsh (Andover Junction Publications, 1994, ISBN: 0-944119-14-X). It has a photo of a 1939 Champion dining car on page 39 and a photo of an Orange Blossom Special dining car in 1947 showing the divider curtain separating the tables reserved for black passengers from the rest of the car. The information about segregation is on page 81.

[AntonioFP45]

Hi guys

Forgive me for posting to an older thread, but I wanted to contribute as I'm an ACL and SCL fan.

I received the book "By Streamliner New York to Florida" as a birthday present 2 years ago.  I find it so enjoyable to read.  I've been living in Florida since the early 70s and it amazed me to read that ACL and SAL trains clocked 80 to 100 mph speeds up and down the east coast.  That must have been an incredible sight.

Re: Segregation.

According to the above mentioned book, President Harry Truman issued orders abolishing segregation in dining cars during the early 1950s.  Segregation was being "whittled away" during the 50s long before the civil rights actions of the 60s. Of course, railroads of the "deep south", such as the Central of Georgia, continued segregation through the early 1960s.  

My late father (a black Hispanic) traveled from New York City to Miami around 1958-59. From his description, I'm assuming he rode either the Vacationer or the East Coast Champion.   He told me that it was a good journey and did not encounter any segregation type issues. 

[daveklepper]

When I regularly rode the ACL during WWII to and from Canp LeJeune, NC. using Wilson as the station, trains were segregated.  When I became a regular SCL and SAL customer 1955-1956, stationed at Fort Bragg, NC, there was zero segregation.  I rode just about all NY -Florida streamliners during this second period.

[The Commodore]

I was traveling on the Champion to Miami in 1952 and it was the first time I saw a black person in a passenger train.  This would have been out of Jacksonville.  Remember talking to her as she was in the seat next to mine.  This would have been at Christmas time and I was 14.

The Champion was one of my favorite trains and I rode it several time after I joined the Coast Guard.  

 

[KCSfan]

I rode the Chicago - Florida streamliners, City of Miami and Southwind, and the Southern's New Royal Palm connecting at Jacksonville with the West Coast Champion to/from Bradenton, FL numerous times during the 1945-55 tme frame. Not once do I remember seeing a black person im my coach or in the dining car or the obs/lounge so I guess they all must have been segregated in those times.

I think the practice varied from railroad to railroad. Until at least 1958 the Illinois Central segregated passengers at Central Station in Chciago. Black passengers destined for Kentucky and  further south would be directed to the head end cars by "Passenger Service Representatives" while those going to points within Illinois were given their choice of cars. At stops other than Chicago the traimen themselves had the task of segregating the travelers. Trains of the Central of Georgia were segregated until well into the 1960's.

I am not aware of any segregation of Pullman passenges. The rationale was apparently that blacks who were affluent enough to ride in the sleepers were suitable to travel with the whte passengers.

Mark

[wjstix]

It's important to remember that segregation was based on state laws and the "separate but equal" Supreme Court ruling. Railroads didn't have the choice to obey the law or not, although how each railroad adjusted to accomodate the law in a particular state might differ from railroad to railroad. Of course, railroads were major employers and would have had a certain clout in the states they served. If a large railroad didn't segregate it's trains going from the north to Florida, a Southern state might  choose to look the other way and not enforce the law.

For many decades it was common to have a "Jim Crow" car (named after a minstrel show character IIRC) for blacks to ride in. Usually this was a very old car - ironically part of the reason we have some of the old passenger cars we have now in museums is because these old cars were used as Jim Crow cars long after similar cars had been scrapped.

I don't know this for a fact, but I strongly suspect that Pullman cars operating in a Southern state would have had to be segregated to meet local laws. I know that Pullman porters (who were primarily blacks) were allowed to rest in an unused Pullman berth if one was available, except that if say the upper berth was available but the lower one was occupied by a white woman, the porter couldn't use the upper berth - and that wasn't just in the South, it was a Pullman company rule.

[passengerfan]

There were many lightweight Jim Crow coaches built during the streamlined era. Just about every RR than ran into the south had the cars in some trains entire coaches were designated as the Jim Crow cars on other RRs part of  a car was partitioned off for segragating the passengers. Railroads such as the Santa Fe, Southern Pacifiic, Missouri Pacific, MKT, Frisco, IC, and numerous others all had lightweight streamlined Jim Crow coaches.

Al - in - Stockton

[Deggesty]

I remember riding in a heavyweight Southern partitioned coach from Statesville, N. C., toWinston-Salem in 1958. One end had a small restroom on each side of the aisle by the vestibule door; the other end had a large restroom at each end of the compartment. I do not recall any passengers in the end with two small restrooms, but I would think that this was the end for the colored passengers.

The day after Christmas, 1955, I rode the Pelican from Birmingham to Chattanooga. As we were leaving Birmingham, the conductor found an elderly colored gentleman in the coach I was in, and told him he had to move (remember that the state laws were in effect then). The gentleman explained that there was no seat available in the car he should be riding, and he was not able to stand. I confess that I do not know how the matter was resolved.

Johnny

[samtrak1204]

I rode the West Coast Champion to and from Orlando when I spent my summer vacations in the Motor City starting in 1954. I was 9 years old.  The Champion and all southern stations were completely segregated in 1954 and 1955.  I skipped 1956, but by 1957 the dirty "colored" coach was gone.  In the past blacks had usually been assigned seats in baggage coach (CW40) where chicken bones littered the aisles. Filthy stinking toilets lit up the whole car which lacked a smoking lounge and the stylish decor found in the "white" coaches. In some old pictures from the 1940's the colored baggage coach on the front of some ACL streamliners was effectively cut-off from the rest of the train by inserting a baggage car behind it, thereby confining black passengers to the dingy little cramped quarters throughout the whole trip with no access to the diner or lounge.  

Rumor has it that the late great Mary Mcleod Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman College and member of FDR's "Black Cabinet", boarded the East Coast Champion in Daytona Beach to visit her friend Eleanor Roosevelt in Washington, DC.  She was then harrassed by the white conductor after refusing to move to the colored coach.  She got off the train in Jacksonville and called her friend Ellie. The conductor was promptly fired and supposedly spent the rest of his days waving at passing trains screaming, "Why didn't yall tell me who she wuz?"

As a kid I was always being thrown out of lounge cars by surly conductors on the "Champion" and Southern Railway's "Royal Palm" - which carried the segregated RP1 baggage/coach - when all I wanted to do was slurp a coke and read the "Official Railway Guide".The two "colored" tables behind the curtain next to the Champion's steaming hot kitchen were gone, but southern white stewards refused to sit blacks and whites at the same table, so I often had to wait for days while white passengers were constantly being greeted and seated. New York Central agents in Detroit would book me on the integrated Detroit-Miami thru-coach to Jacksonville, but my reserved seat to Orlando was always in CW40 until ACL finally decided to comply with federal law in 1956 or 57.. 

Of course all engineers and conductors were white while porters, waiters, and cooks were black.  The railways operating unions were the last labor unions in the United States to admit blacks.

Passenger Train Journal published "The Champion" (November 1987) and "Reflections in Black and White" (March 1988) written by me. 

[daveklepper]

Just to point out that originally the Campion was a coach-only NY - Miami streamliner and it evolved into two Champions, East Coast to Miami and West Coast with separate sections south of Jacksonville for St. Petersburg and Tampa, with through cars to Floirda points futher south, and then both had coaches and Pullmans.

[samtrak1204]

After the FEC strike in 1963 Orlando hosted a daily parade of streamliners to and from New York, Chicago, Tampa, and Miami.  I was in "Railroad Heaven" for a minute!  Will my beloved State and Florida ever sponsor rail service along the old Florida East Coast Railway? California and Florida are often compared, but the Sunshine State is still in the dark ages. 

Wow! It's been almost 56 years (1954) since I boarded the Miamian's RP7 (Miami-Detroit thru-coach) in Daytona Beach for a short integrated ride to Jacksonville where I was forced to transfer to the Royal Palm's RP1 colored coach to Cincinnati - across the Mason-Dixon line -  where I reboarded RP7 for an integrated ride into the Motor City.  Detroit-bound white passengers boarding the thru-coach in Florida experienced a seamless journey and were not burdened by the shackles of segregation.