William H. Council, April 7, 1887
William Hooper Councill was born into slavery in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1848. His father escaped to Canada in 1854 but was unable to secure the freedom of his wife and children. In 1857 Councill, his mother (Mary Jane), and his brother Cicero were sold at the slave market in Richmond, Virginia, to a plantation owner in northern Alabama. Two other brothers were sold separately. During the Civil War, Councill, with his mother and brother, escaped in 1863 to a U.S. Army camp in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Returning to Alabama after the war, Councill was educated in a freedmen’s school and was tutored in Latin, chemistry, physics, and mathematics in the evenings. In 1867 and 1869 he founded schools for freedmen in Jackson and Madison Counties. His political ambitions led him to a two-year stint (1872–1874) as chief enrolling clerk for the state legislature and to a failed bid for a seat as a legislator.
Councill left the Republican Party for the Democratic Party in 1875, a move that lost him many supporters but gained him a position as the first principal of the State Normal and Industrial School (now Alabama A&M University) near Huntsville. While there he simultaneously published the Huntsville Herald from 1877 to 1884 and read law. He was admitted to the Alabama bar in 1883, though he never practiced law.
On April 7, 1887, Councill held a first-class ticket to travel on the Western & Atlantic Railroad from Chattanooga into Georgia. On boarding the train he sat in the first-class coach, where he was assaulted by another passenger and violently forced into the Jim Crow section of the smoking car. Councill was not opposed to segregation per se, but he firmly believed that the accommodations offered to segregated Black first-class passengers should be the same as those for white first-class passengers.
The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) had been established by President Grover Cleveland in February 1887 to regulate domestic commerce and transportation. Section 3.1 of the act states unequivocally: “It shall be unlawful for any common carrier subject to the provisions of this act to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person . . . in any respect whatsoever, or to subject any particular person . . . to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage in any respect whatsoever.”
On May 31 Councill became the first person to file with the ICC a complaint about the mistreatment he suffered as a result of the railroad company’s Jim Crow rules, asking “that the Commission award him $25,000 in damages, and such other relief as it may deem proper.” The ICC report outlines the case in some detail, describing Councill as “an intelligent colored man, well dressed, self possessed and of good address.” It is particularly remarkable that, by way of contrast, the Commission quotes verbatim the deposition of Councill’s assailant, Charles Whitsett:
“I walked forward to the front end of the car and told Mr. Bivins, the flagman, that I wanted his lantern a minute. I took it out of his hand, then turned and walked back to where Council[l] was sitting and told him there was to be no more foolishness, that I did not want to hurt him, but he had to go. He replied very insolently that he would not go, and then I grabbed him in the collar and struck him over the head with the lantern. I knocked him out of his seat and pulled him out. He fell to the floor and as he raised up he came toward me, and I let him have it again with the lantern. I hit him several times before I conquered him and then rushed him right out of the car into the darkies’ car. He was willing to go by the time I got through with him.”
Whitsett’s comment that “he came toward me,” of course, suggests that Whitsett was claiming that he was being attacked and acting in self-defense.
The ICC chairman declined to rule on the matter of damages as beyond the purview of the commission, agreeing with the railroad that the company did have the right to classify passengers “on the color line.” Councill’s lawyers conceded that point but argued further that first-class facilities and conveniences had to be equal for both races. On December 3, 1887, the commission ruled in Councill’s favor, stating, “There is no undue prejudice or unjust preference shown by the railroad companies in separating their white and colored passengers by providing cars for each, if the cars so provided are equally safe and comfortable.” Any damages, fees, or expenses for which the company may have been liable, they determined, had to be decided in a court of law. Six days later the AME minister (later Bishop) William H. Heard filed a similar complaint to the ICC, which again reached a similarly equivocal and largely toothless decision.
In late 1887, when several State Normal and Industrial School students attempted to sit in the first-class coach on a trip from Huntsville to Decatur, Georgia, Councill was accused of “forcing social equality” and pressured to resign as principal, though he was reinstated in 1888. After this time Councill became more openly accommodationist, accepting Jim Crow as he worked to support the school, even while also addressing questions of race in his writing.