Evening star., 1946-03-30
BY LoweU MeHett

The United States Supreme
Court has been hearing arguments
in a Jim Grow. case. The right Of
the State of Virginia to require the
segregation of white and colorec
passengers in buses is up for exam.
ination by the high court. Decision
doubtless will be reached after pro-
found contemplation of certain ar
ticles of the Constitution, but car
suggest a method whereby the
learned justices would be spared
this wear and tear on their brains
Let them march in body anc
board a bus for one of the Virginia
towns across the river. They should
pick out a bus that has only stand
ing room left. Under Virginia Law
they will be required to stand ir
front, which means merely in front
of any negroes standing or sitting
at the back. There is no fixed
dividing line between the front and
the back.
The eminent jurists, if they can
avoid stepping on one another's
feet, if they don't mind impious
strangers breathing down their
necks and if they are on the alert
for sudden fits and starts, won't
have such a bad time until they
come to the first stop on the other
side of the river. Then their trou-
bles will begin.
They will feel pressure from
the rear and considerable commo-
ton. A colored woman and her lit.
tie boy will be trying to get of
the bus. To accomplish this they
must struggle through the packed
aisle all the way from the rear
squeezing past all the other stand
ups. 1t won't be easy for the woman
and she won't make it comfortable
for anybody else, since, naturally
she'll have her little boy by the
hand and her elbow out to protect
him. Eventually, while the bus
waits, she will succeed in getting
off-probably resenting the fact
that she wasn't permitted to sit or
stand in front whence she could
have alighted without disturbing
anybody.
The justices will draw a long
breath of relief, but they won't be
able to hold it. Another commo-
tion will have started from the
front. A colored carpenter will have
got aboard carrying his tool box
or maybe just his saw and his
lunch box, and he will have to
work his difficult way to the back.
It will be like that to the end o1
the line. Inevitably there will be 6
number of colored cooks, all of the
large, expansive type that put the
fun in feeding; the kind you love
to have in your kitchen or even as
far front as the dining room, ano
who don't bother you bit when
they jreach over your shoulder tc
serve you. But they do take ur
room on a bus and they do flatten
out their fellow travellers when
they're wedging themselves in and
ou+>
At the end of the line and before
they've even called taxi to take
them back to court, the justices will
have made up their minds about
that Jim Grow bus law. They will
have decided that, whether or not
it is constitutional, it certainly is
very foolish At least imagine they
will. And 1 imagine also that they
may pay an ironical tribute to those
Virginians who put up with the in
convenience caused by the Jim Crow
law because they think there's some
kind of a principle involved, How
the justices actually will decide the
case before the court, of course, I
wouldn't dare predict.
Jim Crow buses are an anachron-
ism now, if they ever were justified,
which l doubt. In themselves they
are not terribly important, merely a