New Orleans Streetcar

On April 28, 1867, William Nichols, a painter, forced his way onto a whites-only New Orleans streetcar and was physically dragged off by the driver. The charges against him were dropped within two days, which did nothing to settle the matter. Within a week, streetcar companies had adopted a new tactic: instead of removing Black riders by force, drivers were ordered to simply stop the car and wait them out. On May 4, a cigar maker named Joseph Guillaume tested that policy by boarding a car on Love Street. When the driver tried to remove him, Guillaume took the reins himself, drove off, and led police on a chase through the city before his arrest.

By May 8, the city had seen enough. Facing crowds at streetcar terminals and the threat of wider unrest, officials ordered the transit companies to accept any passenger, full stop. New Orleans, two years removed from the Civil War, had desegregated its entire streetcar system. The victory held for thirty five years, until Louisiana’s Jim Crow laws quietly rolled it back in 1902.

The tracks under all of this trouble were already old news by 1867. They had been laid in 1835, and they are still there, carrying more than three million riders a year on what is now recognized as the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world.