Jim Crow Laws: Louisiana
This list contains Jim Crow laws and anti-Jim Crow laws. (Please note the source of this list in the footnotes below.)
1868: Barred school segregation [Statute]
Prohibited separate schools based on race.
1869: Barred public accommodations and carrier segregation [Statute]
Prohibited excluding passengers from railroads, streetcars, steamboats, coaches or other vehicles based on race. Allowed for a person's removal if they did not pay the fare, or engaged in disorderly conduct, or committed an act that injured the business of the carrier. Penalty: Forfeiture of the license and closing of the place of business; offender liable to suit by the injured party to recover damages.
1870: Anti-miscegenation [State Code]
Private or religious marriages legal to all persons of whatever race or color as well as to marriages formerly prohibited by any law of the state. No language prohibiting intermarriage or miscegenation.
1873: Barred public accommodations and carrier segregation [Statute]
Ensured all Louisiana and U.S. citizens equal and impartial access to use all common carriers on land and water, inns and all public resorts. Penalty: Forfeiture of business license. Liable for damages in favor of the injured party.
1890: Railroads [Statute]
Railway companies to provide equal but separate accommodations for white and colored passengers. Penalty: Passengers or conductors not complying with the law subject to a fine of $25 or imprisonment for 20 days. Officers and directors of railway companies that fail to comply guilty of a misdemeanor and could be fined between $100 and $500. Law did not apply to streetcars.
1894: Miscegenation [Statute]
Intermarriage between white persons and persons of color prohibited.
1894: Railroads [Statute]
Depots must provide equal but separate waiting rooms for the white and colored races. "No person shall occupy the wrong room." Law must be posted in a conspicuous place. Penalty: Persons who insist on entering the improper place may be fined $25 or imprisoned up to 30 days. Agents failing to enforce the law guilty of misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of $25 to $50.
1898: Education [Constitution]
General Assembly to establish free public schools for the white and colored races.
1902: Streetcars [Statute]
All streetcars must provide separate but equal accommodations. Penalty: Passengers or conductors not complying could receive a fine of $25 or imprisonment up to 30 days. A railway company that refused to comply could receive a fine of $100, or imprisonment between 60 days and six months.
1908: Public accommodation [Statute]
Unlawful for whites and blacks to buy and consume alcohol on the same premises. Penalty: Misdemeanor, punishable by a fine between $50 to $500, or imprisonment in the parish prison or jail up to two years.
1908: Miscegenation [Statute]
Concubinage between the Caucasian or white race and any person of the Negro or black race is a felony. Penalty: Imprisonment from one month to one year, with or without hard labor.
1910: Miscegenation [Statute]
Restatement of the law passed in 1908, using the words "Persons of the Caucasian and colored races."
1912: Residential [Statute]
Building permits for building Negro houses in white communities, or any portion of a community inhabited principally by white people, and vice versa prohibited. Penalty: violators fined from $50 to $2,000, "and the municipality shall have the right to cause said building to be removed and destroyed."
1914: Public accommodation [Statute]
All circuses, shows and tent exhibitions required to provide two ticket offices with individual ticket sellers and two entrances to the performance for each race.
1918: Prisons [Statute]
Provided for the segregation of the races in all municipal, parish and state prisons.
1921: Housing [Statute]
Prohibited Negro and white families from living in the same dwelling place.
1921: Education [Constitution]
Called for separate, free public schools for the education of white and black children between the ages of six and eighteen years.
1928: Public Carrier [Statute]
Equal but separate accommodations to be provided on all public carriers.
1932: Miscegenation [State Code]
Outlawed interracial marriages. Nullified interracial marriages if parties went to another jurisdiction where such marriages were legal. Also prohibited Negroes and Indians to marry each other.
1932: Residential [State Code]
No person or corporation shall rent an apartment in an apartment house or other like structure to a person who is not of the same race as the other occupants.
1942: Health Care [Statute]
Separate but equal accommodations for the races to be provided in old age homes.
1951: Adoption [Statute]
Forbid interracial adoptions.
1951: Miscegenation [Statute]
Cohabitation between whites and blacks illegal. Penalty: Up to $1,000, or up to five years imprisonment, or both.
1952: Miscegenation [State Code]
Prohibited marriage between whites and persons of color. Penalty: Up to $1,000 and/or five years imprisonment.
1954: Education [Statute]
Immediately after the Brown decision, Louisiana amended its Constitution to state that all public and elementary schools would be operated separately for white and black children. Penalty: $500 to $1,000 for not enforcing and imprisonment from three to six months.
1956: Recreation [Statute]
Firms were prohibited from permitting on their premises any dancing, social functions, entertainments, athletic training, games, sports or contests in which the participants are members of the white and Negro races.
1956: Public carriers [Statute]
Revised older laws requiring that common carriers provide separate waiting rooms for white intrastate passengers and for Negro intrastate and interstate passengers.
1956: Employment [Statute]
Provided that all persons, firms or corporations create separate bathroom facilities for members of the white and Negro races employed by them or permitted to come upon their premises. In addition, separate eating places in separate rooms as well as separate eating and drinking utensils were to be provided for members of the white and Negro races. Penalty: Misdemeanor, $100 to $1,000, 60 days to one year imprisonment.
1956: Public accommodations [Statute]
All public parks, recreation centers, playgrounds, etc. would be segregated. This provision was made "for the purpose of protecting the public health, morals and the peace and good order in the state and not because of race."
1957: Education [Constitution]
All public schools to be racially segregated.
1957: Education [Statute]
Compulsory attendance suspended in school systems where integration ordered; no state funds to non-segregated schools.
1958: Health Care [Statute]
All human blood to be used in the state of Louisiana for transfusions to be labeled with the word "Caucasian," "Negroid," or "Mongoloid" so as to clearly indicate the race of the donor. If the blood was not labeled it was not permitted to be used.
1960: Voting rights [Statute]
Required that the race of all candidates named on ballots be designated.
FOOTNOTES:
"The History of Jim Crow," n.d., <http://jimcrowhistory.org> (25 November 2009).