Lee Gen. Robert E. Lee's Daughter Arrested

It's a pretty interesting news item and one I'd never heard. After reading the weta blog link, I have a hunch that there was no demonstration intended. I also have a hunch she felt like she was in a privileged position--being Lee's daughter and well-known. Of course, I'm just guessing. Thanks for posting the story.
 
It's a little like parking in a handicapped space, in a way - after all, the black man who wished to sit there was not free to go take her spot in the white section. The law was a bad law, but her actions in violating it were not laudable. The wasn't about an abstract idea, she inconvenienced a real person. Someone had to stand because she chose to sit in his spot instead of moving.
Never thought of it that way
 
It sure does let us know how serious the authorities were about enforcing the laws of segregation. At least in Virginia.
 
It's a little like parking in a handicapped space, in a way - after all, the black man who wished to sit there was not free to go take her spot in the white section. The law was a bad law, but her actions in violating it were not laudable. The wasn't about an abstract idea, she inconvenienced a real person. Someone had to stand because she chose to sit in his spot instead of moving.

I think that's so and there's also the adjustment of old attitudes. She'd been raised all her life as a person people deferred to, both as a lady and as a Lee, with the old social codes - she was a lady and her maid could sit with her, by golly! That guy can sit elsewhere... Sometimes we forget how hard it must have been on people of her generation who were raised one way and had to get used to another way that was mostly opposite. I believe that went both ways, too, for that matter.
 
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Source: Cleveland Gazette June 21, 1902: Gen. Robert E. Lee's Daughter Arrested

Volume: 19...
Issue Number: 46
Page Number: 02
Date: 06/21/1902

Notice the frequent incorrect substitution of CuRtis for CuStis as her maternal patronymic middle name.
 
I think that's so and there's also the adjustment of old attitudes. She'd been raised all her life as a person people deferred to, both as a lady and as a Lee, with the old social codes - she was a lady and her maid could sit with her, by golly! That guy can sit elsewhere... Sometimes we forget how hard it must have been on people of her generation who were raised one way and had to get used to another way that was mostly opposite. I believe that went both ways, too, for that matter.

Diane, are you saying that the earlier street cars wouldn't have been segregated? Because this came up in New Orleans when Butler took over and the mule pulled cars were segregated.
 
It's a little like parking in a handicapped space, in a way - after all, the black man who wished to sit there was not free to go take her spot in the white section. The law was a bad law, but her actions in violating it were not laudable. The wasn't about an abstract idea, she inconvenienced a real person. Someone had to stand because she chose to sit in his spot instead of moving.

I think that's not what's going on here - in most communities, while coloreds had their own places, they were supposed to give them up to whites when the cars were full and there were standing whites. I think it's unlikely this was an SRO occasion.
 
My musing would be that Mary Lee had traveled the world a great deal, where a well off traveler expects a certain level of treatment. That segregation/Jim Crow had little to do with her refusal to move.

She was Mary Lee and didn't expect rules for regular travelers to apply to her. As they probably hadn't in many of her trips around the world.
 
Diane, are you saying that the earlier street cars wouldn't have been segregated? Because this came up in New Orleans when Butler took over and the mule pulled cars were segregated.
From what I'm reading between the lines, these laws were new in this location, and before then, "segregated" seems to have meant "There's a section which negroes had better not sit in unless they are with a white person as servants." It would be interesting to know if there were any specific laws on the books, or just customs.

I imagine Mary Custis wasn't the only person caught off guard by the notion that the Jim Crow laws in practice did not just oppress black people, but also gave them specific rights. And it's interesting to notice how these laws served no one, black or white - this old white lady preferred the back of the bus and couldn't sit there anymore! Crazy. If black people hated it and white people hated it, how does such a law get made? Would love to know if anyone confronted the legislator who proposed and wrote the law with this incident, and what his response was.

Hoping sixty years ago doesn't count as modern politics. My mom has told me of being unable to visit the zoo in Memphis when she wanted as a child because it was "blacks only" day. You can see pictures of the signage at the zoo saying "no whites allowed" if you run a google search for Memphis Zoo and Jim Crow.
 
My brother is one of the ones who rather sit in the back of the bus. He used to rail all the time on how it didn't make a dime's bit of difference if a black person used the same water fountain or the same counter at the post office....he probably would have stayed put. :sneaky:
 
I asked about Northern Virginia and segregation because I'd read about the streetcars in New Orleans at the time of the Union occupation. There were separate black and white cars with a star painted on the side of the cars for blacks. The streetcars were briefly desegregated in 1863, but the company that ran them instituted a lawsuit which they won.

As for the newness of such laws, the incident in Plessy v. Ferguson happened in 1892 and was decided in 1896, specifically about segregation of rail cars.

Perhaps Alexandria or The Commonwealth had less restrictive laws about race than New Orleans, but generally, people of color in Louisiana traditionally had more freedoms than elsewhere in the South. As for who passed such laws? Friends and relatives of Mary Lee.
 
As for who passed such laws? Friends and relatives of Mary Lee.
Unless you have more information than you're revealing, you don't know the truth of this statement.

Laws are proposed by specific individuals. They have names. If the person who wrote this law was a relative of the Lees, that's a true statement. If he was a friend of Mary Custis Lee, that's a true statement. He may have been neither. She may have particularly hated this person who was no kin to her. While it's very likely true that people of her social class created such laws, I certainly wouldn't want to be held personally responsible for every law enacted by Tennessee legislators of my own social class today. Blanket statements about people you know nothing about are not good history.
 
With all due respect, Allie, I have admitted that I am far less knowledgeable about the military aspects of the Civil War than most who frequent CWT, but I usually pay attention to the political. The Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1900 codified the Jim Crow laws to ensure that **** in Virginia was written into law. The delegate to that convention from Alexandria was Frances Lee Smith, who was the personal attorney of Robert E. Lee and who represented him in the lawsuit to regain Arlington House.

Mary Lee's brother was a state senator in Virginia and U.S. Congressman from Northern Virginia, her cousin Fitzhugh Lee was governor of The Commonwealth, and descendants of the Lee-Randolph-Fitzhugh-Harrison-Byrd families were scattered throughout Virginia politics of the era. Mary's husband and father both served as Presidents of Washington and Lee University.

As for the politics of creating laws--perhaps that's how a bill passes on Constitution Rock. However, those of us on the outside don't really know who the powers are that allow any particular bill to get passed. We also don't know if the person whose name is on the bill for introducing it is the one behind a bill, or if he just agreed to put it into the hopper at the behest of someone else.
 
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With all due respect, Allie, I have admitted that I am far less knowledgeable about the military aspects of the Civil War than most who frequent CWT, but I usually pay attention to the political. The Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1900 codified the Jim Crow laws to ensure that **** in Virginia was written into law. The delegate to that convention from Alexandria was Frances Lee Smith, who was the personal attorney of Robert E. Lee and who represented him in the lawsuit to regain Arlington House.

Mary Lee's brother was a state senator in Virginia and U.S. Congressman from Northern Virginia, her cousin Fitzhugh Lee was governor of The Commonwealth, and descendants of the Lee-Randolph-Fitzhugh-Harrison-Byrd families were scattered throughout Virginia politics of the era. Mary's husband and father both served as Presidents of Washington and Lee University.

As for the politics of creating laws--perhaps that's how a bill passes on Constitution Rock. However, those of us on the outside don't really know who the powers are that allow any particular bill to get passed. We also don't know if the person whose name is on the bill for introducing it is the one behind a bill, or if he just agreed to put it into the hopper at the behest of someone else.
I know that it is true that politicians don't write most of the legislation they sponsor (I am including his lackey employees as being 'him' by way of agency theory), but was that true 115 years ago?
 
this is really interesting id love to come down in the summer and visit some of the places . I heard General Lee also had a house in Richmond is that true?
 
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