The Colored People's Rights

Proprietors of steamboats retain the right for making rules for the business they serve, as the Mayor decided.A black man was removed from a steamboat for breaking the rules determining where he could be on the boat in Norfolk.The proprietor of the steamboat cannot be prosecuted because he abides by all stated rules.

The Colored People's Rights - Mayor Budlow of Norfolk, has just decided an interesting case. A negro was put off a ferry because he obtruded himself upon a part of the boat where he was forbidden to go. The negro prosecuted the deck officer. The Mayor decides that the right of proprietors of steamboats to make reasonable rules for the regulation of business is not only consistent with reason, but is settled by the repeated decisions of the courts. It has never been denied, and has always been sustained by the decisions to the extent of excluding from the boats all persons who refuse to obey such regulations. It is beyond all question that the defendant is not liable to prosecution, and must be discharged. - Day Book.

“The Colored People's Rights,” Reconstructing Virginia, accessed June 1, 2023, https://reconstructingvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/635.