page_title: Boynton v. Virginia
section_title: Boynton's trip and arrest
hierarchical_section_title: Boynton v. Virginia / Boynton's trip and arrest
caption_attribution_description: English: View of the Trailways Station, Richmond, Virginia, October 1960. Cropped from the photo "East Broad Street looking west from 9th Street" Attribution: Adolph B. Rice Studio collection of the Library of Virginia. (CC BY-SA 2.0) https://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_virginia/3595196101/
context_page_description: Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454, was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court. The case overturned a judgment convicting an African American law student for trespassing by being in a restaurant in a bus terminal which was "whites only". It held that racial segregation in public transportation was illegal because such segregation violated the Interstate Commerce Act, which broadly forbade discrimination in interstate passenger transportation. It moreover held that bus transportation was sufficiently related to interstate commerce to allow the United States federal government to regulate it to forbid racial discrimination in the industry.
  Thurgood Marshall argued the case for Boynton. The majority opinion was written by Justice Hugo Black.
  The significance of Boynton was not located in its holding since it managed to avoid deciding any Constitutional questions in its decision, and its expansive reading of Federal powers regarding interstate commerce was also well established by the time of the decision.
context_section_description: In the winter of 1958, Bruce Boynton was a student at Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. While travelling on a Trailways bus for a holiday trip to his home in Selma, Alabama, his bus arrived at the Trailways station on East Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia. Passengers disembarked for a 40-minute layover. Unlike other black passengers, Boynton went into a "whites only" restaurant, where he ordered a cheeseburger and a cup of hot tea. He never had problems in Northern states, but he grew up in Selma and was familiar with segregation of restaurants and movie theaters. It was not his intent to test any laws in the South that night.
  Ordered to move to the "black" section and knowing that his arrest was likely, Boynton pointed out to authorities that he was an American citizen with federal rights and, thus, was entitled to his burger and tea. Handcuffed and arrested on a misdemeanor trespass charge, he spent the night in jail and was fined $10 in a Richmond municipal court.
caption: Bruce Boynton was arrested at the Trailways Station, 822 E. Broad St.Richmond, Virginia in late 1958 (Library of Virginia photo, 1960)
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