In the early 1900s, when African Americans were forced to sit in the back of trolleys behind white riders, a man named Randolph Miller started picking up Black Chattanoogans in horse-drawn buggies, taking them to work and the grocery store.
Then regulators started fining the drivers, claiming they were overworking the horses.
“They tried to put them out of business, and eventually they did,” Elijah Cameron, the director of community relations at the Bessie Smith Cultural Center, said in a phone call.
In the 1940s and 1950s, a system of jitney cabs had gained traction in the city, he said. Named after an old term for a nickel, those unregulated, unlicensed private vehicles followed the bus line and transported Black residents around Chattanooga. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Cameron was a child, the cabs charged about 25 cents, he said.
“That’s what most Blacks would use as their transportation, those that didn’t have cars, because they felt disrespected,” Cameron said.