Читать книгу Race Distinctions in American Law - Gilbert Thomas Stephenson - Страница 25

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The present vagrancy laws of the South have been much criticised for the reason, as it is alleged, that they are used to get recruits for chain gangs and convict camps, and that Negro vagrants are taken up while white vagrants go scotfree. Be that as it may, the fault lies with the officers, not with the law, for the law, on its face, applies to both races equally. But the first years after the War did witness the enactment of vagrancy laws which had special application to Negroes. Some States passed vagrancy laws which made no race distinction, but, as in the case of apprentices, it is beyond dispute that they were aimed especially at the Negro.

The following persons South Carolina^[113] classed as vagrants: (1) all persons who have not some fixed and known place of abode, and some lawful and reputable employment; (2) those who have not some visible and known means of a fair, honest, and reputable livelihood; (3) all common prostitutes; (4) those who are found wandering from place to place, vending, bartering, or peddling any articles or commodities without a license; (5) all common gamblers; (6) persons who lead idle or disorderly lives, or keep or frequent disorderly or disreputable houses or places; (7) those who, not having sufficient means of support, are able to work and do not work; (8) those who (whether or not they own lands, or are lessees or mechanics) do not provide a reasonable and proper maintenance for themselves and families; (9) those who are engaged in representing publicly or privately, for fee or reward, without license, any tragedy, interlude, comedy, farce, play, or other similar entertainment, exhibition of the circus, sleight-of-hand, waxworks, or the like; (10) those who, for private gain, without license, give any concert or musical entertainment, of any description; (11) fortune tellers; (12) sturdy beggars; (13) common drunkards; (14) those who hunt game of any description, or fish on the land of others or frequent the premises, contrary to the will of the occupants. That the South Carolina legislature had the Negro primarily in mind is shown by the fact that this section is included in the act “to establish and regulate the domestic relations of persons of color and to amend the law in relation to paupers and vagrancy.”

Mississippi^[114] had a vagrancy list almost as extensive as that above with the addition that any freedmen, free Negroes, or mulattoes over eighteen years of age, found on the second Monday in January, 1866, or thereafter, with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawfully assembling themselves together in the day or night time, and white persons “so assembling with freedmen, free Negroes, or mulattoes... on terms of equality, or living in adultery or fornication with a freedwoman, free Negro, or mulatto,” should be considered vagrants. The white man so convicted was punishable by a fine of two hundred dollars and imprisonment for not more than six months; the Negro, by a fine of fifty dollars and imprisonment for not over ten days. A Negro unable to pay his fine might be hired out for the purpose, but no such provision applied to whites.