Black Passengers Challenge Railroad Segregation Through NAACP Test Cases

Throughout the 1910s, the NAACP organized systematic legal challenges to railroad segregation through carefully chosen test cases, coordinating with Black passengers willing to be arrested for refusing Jim Crow seating. These early cases built legal precedent and exposed the costs of segregation enforcement. While few succeeded before the 1940s, they established the legal strategy that would eventually produce McCabe v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway (1914), where the Supreme Court held that railroads could not provide unequal services to Black and white passengers.