28-02-2025
Black History Month: Overturning Oklahoma's Jim Crow laws
VINITA, Okla. – Just weeks after Oklahoma became the nation's 46th state in 1907, the Oklahoma Senate passed its first law — a Jim Crow law—calling for mandatory segregation between races in train cars.
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that legalized racial segregation. These laws existed after the Civil War and lasted until 1968. They primarily denied African Americans many rights, including voting, employment, education, and other opportunities, and those who disobeyed the laws were fined, arrested, and sometimes killed.
The first 'Jim Crow' Oklahoma law provided for the separation of '…coaches or compartments' and provided 'accommodation of the white and negro races, which separate coaches or cars shall be equal in all points of comfort and convenience.'
Around 540 railroad depots had to be altered to fit the new separate waiting room requirement, and new coaches also had to be added to the lines.
The penalty for disobeying ranged from $100 to $1,000 for any company failing to provide separate facilities, and passengers were charged with a misdemeanor and fined $5 to $25. If a conductor failed to enforce the law, they could be fined $50 to $500.
Click here to view a history of Oklahoma's Jim Crow laws.
On a train ride from Kansas City to McAlester on Dec. 31, 1910, Dr. William J. Thompkins, the son of a former slave, refused to leave his Pullman Car after he learned that the MKT Railroad, also known as the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad, did not have equal train accommodations.
Thompkins had a background in medicine, newspaper publishing, and civil service—he was also a forerunner of a legal battle that lasted another 50 years.
Thompkins, the founder of the first U.S. hospital staffed entirely by African Americans in Kansas City, boarded a train from Kansas City to McAlester at 1 a.m. on December 31, 1910. He was to arrive in McAlester to operate on a patient.
After crossing into Oklahoma, the train's conductor asked Thompkins if he was Black, to which the physician answered yes.
The conductor advised Thompkins he was violating Oklahoma law by riding in this White-Only Pullman car. Thompkins asked if there was a Black-Only Pullman car, and when informed there wasn't, he refused to stay in the all-black car because of substandard conditions, according to published reports and a federal lawsuit.
'The 'Jim Crow' car afforded nothing except straight back seats,' according to a Kansas City Times Dec. 2, 1911 article.
Pullman Companies and MKT Railroad forced Thompkins to leave the train and remain at Vinita until the next train bound for McAlester came along, paying a $3.81 fare.
When Thompkins would not leave the train, Jake Smith, the deputy sheriff, and several Vinita city officers forcibly removed him from the train and brought him before a Justice of the Peace, who, according to published reports, fined him $15.
But…court records indicate he was forced to pay a $13 fine.
Thompkins filed a federal lawsuit in 1911, seeking $50,000 each from MKT Railroad and Pullman Company.
According to a Dec. 2, 1911 story in the Kansas City Times, the jury deliberated for three hours before returning a verdict in favor of MKT Railroad and Pullman Company.
The article reports Thompkins's intention of bringing the lawsuit was 'to improve the railroad accommodations offered the negroes in Oklahoma.'
'On the first ballot, the jury voted 10 to 2 in favor of the railroads. One juryman wanted to give the doctor a verdict for the $3 paid for the Pullman ticket, ' the article states.
According to the Kansas City Star, Dec. 1, 1911 story, 'the attention of the jury was called to a statement in the [jury] instructions the plaintiff was a man of unusual intelligence and attainments, and that in the trial of the case he had shown no evidence of possessing a violent or disturbing disposition.'
Judge Van Valkenburg instructed the jurors that 'the superior courts had held that a state 'Jim Crow' law did not apply to interstate passenger traffic, but that a railroad company had the right to establish methods of separating blacks from whites, provided negro holders of first-class tickets were given accommodations equal to those of white passengers,' the article states.
In the Kansas City Times story, Thompkins reportedly said after the verdict, 'It's a fight for principle,' and 'I do not object to the Jim Crow cars if they were at all respectable.' 'I abhor the idea of social equality, but I simply ask for a square deal for the colored people. I have ridden in the 'Jim Crow' cars in Oklahoma, and they are far inferior to those furnished for the whites.'
The verdict was appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On Jan. 28, 1914, the court affirmed the Kansas City District Court's decision not to award Thompkins damages.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which legally ended the segregation that Jim Crow laws had institutionalized. In 1965, the Oklahoma Legislature repealed all segregation statutes for public transportation.
General Surgery
Howard University Medical School, 1905
First Black Superintendent of General Hospital No. 2, 1914
Appointed Assistant of Hygiene and Communicable Diseases
Newspaper editor, Kansas City American,
President of Midwest Life Insurance Company
President of the National Colored Democratic Association
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