Isaac N. Breon
Dr. Entzminger
Foundations of Writing
April 19, 2022
An Analysis of the current uncommon situation of bullying speech problems on public transit:
Did you ever come across a hippy stranger on a public bus, or any public space, that severely injured your sense of privacy with coarse speech? About anything political or simply anything divisive? If you haven’t, then someone else you know of probably has, and his or her story may, indeed, be pretty horrifying. Happily, most forms of bullying have not been too widespread, and many instances that have happened eventually catch the public eye in one form or another. However, that does not mean that bullying, in general, has died down. For many Muslims in America, they encounter this issue when they come across ads that say things like “IN ANY WAR BETWEEN THE CIVILIZED MAN AND THE SAVAGE, SUPPORT THE CIVILIZED MAN. SUPPORT ISRAEL, DEFEAT JIHAD.” on the sides of our own American buses. This kind of abuse has and still happens to every kind of American in many different ways, especially in our divisive and polarized country, both online and in our public spaces and forums. That phase has now infiltrated into the public transportation sector.
Unfortunately, public transportation and bullying, unlike most other prevalent modern forms of bullying, have a very long history together. In American history, on racial grounds, bullying on public transit can be traced back to the days of the slave ships, when ships would arrive into Africa and force people into slavery to sell them in the Americas. Once when the slave trade was abolished in in the United States in 1808, bullying on public transit in the form of racism then spread out into other sectors of the transportation industry, especially the railroads. In fact, the first railroad to incorporate racism was not at all a southern railroad, but a northern railroad that was located in the U.S. State of Massachusetts. According to the Washington Post, in 1838, a 13 1/2 mile-long railroad known as the Eastern Railroad was established that connected East Boston to Salem. The president of the railroad had proclaimed that social change would take precedent, but instead, the railroad only ended up taking society backwards with the invention of the Jim Crow cars. This, then, angered many people with abolitionist and anti-racist sentiments, and eventually, in 1841, the issue reached the state's House of Representatives, where it became a heated topic. That same year, Frederick Douglass and his friend James Buffum purchased tickets for that same railroad, and boarded a whites-only car. They were then ordered to leave their car, and, instead, rebelled. This event caused lots of protests in our country, and Congress then passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which was then overturned in 1883. Nine years after that bill was overturned, in 1892, a staged event too place where a mixed-race Creole man named Homer Plessy boarded a whites-only car. He was only one-eighths Black, so he could easily be identified as "white." He had been born in either 1862 or 1863 to mixed-race Creole parents in Louisiana, and had been the Vice President of a group known as the Comité des Citoyens ("Citizen's Committee" in French). However, this event is a bit different from those described above, because this was actually just a purely staged event. How that happened was that the Comité des Citoyens wanted to hire a police cop and a mixed-race man who would've been seen as enough to pass as White to stage an event that could help to fight a Louisiana law known as the Separate Car Act. Eventually, alongside Mr. Plessy, they also hired a private detective named Christopher C. Cain, who's job was, as part of his "play" role, to arrest Mr. Plessy and send him to court so that they could see the law get overturned. Instead, what then ended up happening was that, although Mr. Plessy was successfully arrested, and then pardoned, the plan eventually flopped when Mr. Plessy and the Comité des Citoyens lost their case, when Justice John Howard Ferguson ruled that the Separate Car Act was constitutional, and thereby set the precedent for all Jim Crow laws that were then enacted in the 20th century. As part of that precedent, all kinds of state-enacted racially prejudiced transportation laws were then enacted across the South in many other jurisdictions of the transportation industry, especially busing. Race issues with regards to busing had occurred before the automotive bus, itself, had even been invented yet. Not quite 168 years ago, on July 16, 1854, a woman named Elizabeth Jennings Graham, "a 24-year-old schoolteacher setting out to fulfill her duties as organist at the First Colored Congregational Church on Sixth Street and Second Avenue," (Zinn Education Project, 2020) was waiting along the street for a horse-drawn bus to pick her up for her to attend a service at her church. At that time, the busing system in New York City was segregated, with African-American-accepting buses saying "Colored Persons Allowed." She boarded a bus that didn't have that sign, and the conductor of the bus then took a hold of her and expelled her. She then filed suit against the Third Avenue Railway Company (yes, the first buses in NYC were also horse-drawn trains), won her case, and then, by 1860, all railroads and public transportation in NYC were desegregated. However, as we all know, it took more than 100 years after that for America to quit it with racist busing systems, and soon, although busing systems became more integrated, it also became a tradition to force Black customers into the backs of buses with white people sitting up front. This is then the custom that Rosa Parks challenged in 1955, 101 years after the 1854 incident, when she boarded a bus and sat in a whites-only seat. Unknown to most people, she had already done work as a Civil Rights suffragist, and was tired of this racist tradition, and so, out of her prior experience, and a strong belief in a God-given inner strength that she believed had been given to her, she boldly refused to give up her seat, and got arrested. This then triggered the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 that later provided itself to become one of the stepping stones for the Civil Rights Movement. After the boycott of 1955, other bus boycotts then sprang up all across the south. These boycotts include the Tallahassee Boycott of 1956, and the Bristol and SNCC Washington D.C. Bus Boycotts of 1963. Yet, still, there was progress to be done in our country to combat racism on public transportation systems. During the 2020 Election, Kamala Harris once criticized President Joe Biden for having not supported desegregated school busing. When Vice President Harris was a girl, segregated school busing was still a commonality among the busing provided by school systems for their students. However, by the time Vice President Harris was in school, this problem was not nearly as much of a commonality as it had once been, because when Vice President Harris was a child, as may be hinted by all the things mentioned above, the civil rights movement had already taken place many years before, and now, seeing Black students on desegregated school busing is probably one of the most widespread commonalities of our generation. However, the influential impact of our nation's history with racism on public transportation hasn't altogether stopped, and attention needs to be paid, because now, that influence has spread to all kinds of bullying in public transportation in general. Just recently, in April of this year, a racially-prejudiced man, who surprisingly is actually an African-American man named Frank James, took hand grenades and detonated them on a subway in Brooklyn. He hates white people, and has said before that "White people and Black people should not have any contact with each other." He also has been to said to have personally known a white man, to whom he said, "I would kill you, but it's not worth the time in jail. Killing you would be like killing a cockroach. You're not even a human being to me." He also has said, "O black Jesus, please kill all the whiteys."
Frank James getting arrested by city cops
Sadly, bullying and the uncontrolled speech problems bullying has caused on public transportation in our day is so unheard of these days that the issue hardly has been studied. However, since the time when former President Donald Trump, who, himself, is quite undignified with regards as to what he says and posts on social media, was inaugurated as President in 2017, bullying claims and speech problems related to public transportation have been on the rise. Happily, though, there have been laws and legal precedents that have helped to keep the speech part of that problem at least s on public transit under control, such as the 1974 case of Lehman vs. City of Shaker Heights. In that case, a man named Harry Lehman, who was running for office in the Ohio State House of Representatives, bought advertising space from the city's local transportation system, but, having made claims of mistreatment against Shaker Heights, filed suit. Once it reached the Supreme Court of Ohio, the state court did side with Shaker Heights, but then the case was elevated to the Supreme Court of the United States. However, the Supreme Court then sided with Shaker Heights, and upholded the city's ban on political advertising. This should happen so with personal communications of speech as well, so as to not personally injure a person's mentality unnecessarily.
The issue of bullying on public transportation sure has a long history, a history that is riddled with things sad and shameful. Highlighted here in this blog is only a small list of the many injustices committed by the insults of those who simply might not have a sent of care about those around them. No sense of pride needs to be heard about these instances, as such actions are horrifying to both endure and remember, and should be said as such by all who may think in a mindset that is proper. The lack of inquiry into the modern issues of this problem, which, happily then, is probably no longer as nearly such a typical thing as it once was, probably has saddened the hearts and minds of the many of this day and age who may have endured such experiences. The result of this, only the future can tell.
Works cited:
1. Badger, Emily. “Yes, This Add Is Offensive. But, Free Speech Rides Public Transit Too.”
Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 5 Oct. 2012, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-10-05/yes-
this-ad-is-offensive-but-free-speech-rides-public-transit-too?fbclid=IwAR2SF6DrZQ-
xz1hDI6yS0ACSqY4FifI8cio8mp6y_xJqdGWZR4yoxIyeHN8.
2. Devine, Miranda. “Suspect Frank James Was Spewing Racist Hate Years before Brooklyn Subway
Shooting.” New York Post, New York Post, 13 Apr. 2022, https://nypost.com/2022/04/13/suspect-frank-
james-was-spewing-racist-hate-well-before-brooklyn-shooting/.
3. Garrison, William Lloyd. “Rebuke of the Eastern Railroad Company, for Their Treatment of Colored Passengers.” The Liberator [Boston, Suffolk County, Massacheusetts, USA], 19 Mar. 1841.
4. Kahn, Ronald. Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights, The First Amendment Encyclopedia, 2009,
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/623/lehman-v-city-of-shaker-
heights#:~:text=In%20Lehman%20v.,speech%20or%20equal%20protection%20rights.
5. Lauranzano, Peter. “Resistance to the Segregation of Public Transportation in the Early 1840's.”
Primary Research, Primary Research, 5 Aug. 2013, http://primaryresearch.org/resistance-to-the-
segregation-of-public-transportation-in-the-early-1840s/.
6. Medley, Keith Weldon. We as Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson. Pelican Pub. Co., 2012. Archive.org,
Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
7. Ohio, Supreme Court of. “Lehman v. City of Shaker: 34 Ohio St. 2d 143 (1973): ST2D1431150.”
Leagle, Supreme Court of Ohio.https://Leagle.com/Images/Logo.png, 2019,|
https://www.leagle.com/decision/197317734ohiost2d1431150.
8. U.S. Supreme Court “Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights, 418 U.S. 298 (1974).” Justia Law, Justia Law,
1974, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/418/298/.
9. Zinn Education Project. “July 16, 1854: Elizabeth Jennings Graham.” Zinn Education Project, Zinn
Education Project, 17 July 2020, https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/elizabeth-jennings-graham/.
10. “Transportation Protests: 1841 - 1992.” Zinn Education Project, 2021,
https://www.civilrightsteaching.org/desegregation/transportation-protests.
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