The 1890s were the beginning of a new and difficult chapter in Arkansas History. Race, which had long been an undercurrent in the social and political history of the state, emerged as an issue once again as a new series of segregation laws were proposed in the legislature with the sole purpose of separating and subjugating African-Americans. The result would usher in a new era of oppression for many that lasted decades in the state. In the 1890 election, Arkansas took a sharp reactionary turn with new legislators and Gov. James Eagle coming to office. Not long after the 1891 legislative session started, Sen. John Tillman proposed a new bill based on a Mississippi law that mandated that railroad passengers be segregated by race on the train and be required to sit in separate rooms while waiting on their trains. Tillman was a Fayetteville attorney, elected to the state senate in 1888, and lobbied fiercely for the bill. Railroads would be fined $100 to $500 per offense for failing to provide segregated rail cars and segregated waiting rooms. Further, the railroads themselves were made to enforce this law. A railroad official not enforcing the segregation statute faced a fine of $25 to $50, a large sum at the time. In spite of the weak opposition to the bill among legislators, urban business leaders managed to scuttle an attempt to include city street cars in the segregation bill and short-line railroads of less than 25 miles only had to have a partition or curtain between the two races. The barrier, however, was enough to make the intent clear. Railroads across the South opposed these bills, citing the added expense of having to carry extra cars to enforce the segregation statute. The Tillman Bill was one of several bills passed by the state legislature in the 1891 session. Two other bills passed severely restricting the rights of African-Americans to vote, including a $1 poll tax that required voters to pay $1 to register to vote. In the deeply impoverished Arkansas of the time, that was too high of a price for democracy. Sen. George Bell, who represented Desha and Chicot counties and who was the only African-American member of the state senate, argued passionately against Tillman. Bell pointed out that there had been no disturbances on integrated rail cars in the state and that there was no need for the bill at all and it only served to antagonize racial tensions. State Rep. John Gray Lucas of Pine Bluff, who had been a delegate to the 1868 state constitutional convention, argued that the bill was a violation of both the Constitution and the basic American idea of liberty. The legislation passed the Senate by a lopsided margin on 26-2 and passed the House by a vote of 72-12. Legislators gave in to their irrational fears and prejudices while others indifferent to the human plight of the men and women they had sworn to serve voted for the legislation. Eagle quickly signed the bill into law without reservation.
A similar law in Louisiana made it all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court, leading to the notorious Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, resulting in legalized segregation for decades. As a result of the poll taxes, the twelve African-American legislators Arkansas had at that time were thrust out of office in the 1892 election, and no African-American would return to the legislature until 1972 in spite of the very large proportion of the population that African-Americans represented in the state. The Twenty-Fourth Amendment, ratified in 1964, finally ended all poll taxes in the United States. Arkansas was still one of the last states that still had a poll tax at that point. Tillman was elected to Congress in 1914, where he later tried to establish a national board to censor books and magazines. As he had worked to deny one group their basic rights, he moved to take rights away from others. In spite of protests, demonstrations, and multitudes of court cases, segregation laws were kept stubbornly intact. Supreme Court decisions in the 1950s and 1960s ultimately dismantled the legal framework supporting segregation and civil rights legislation in the 1960s finally ended segregation. Jim Crow Laws like the Tillman Bill would eventually be swept away. In spite of these rulings, the damage had been done.
