Note: This story was updated on Feb. 29 to correct the timing of integration for Chattanooga’s public transit system.
In the first half of the 20th century, when Jim Crow laws relegated Black Chattanoogans to second-class citizens, African American residents were forced to sit in the back of buses within the city’s public transit behind white residents.
Instead of accepting that second-class status, Black residents created a jitney cab system. According to the history of that era documented by the Bessie Smith Cultural Center, state law defined a jitney as “a self-propelling vehicle other than a streetcar traversing the public streets between certain definite points or termini.”
Those jitneys, operated independently by individual Black residents, would follow the segregated bus routes at the time and charge passengers, primarily Black residents, for a ride, said Elijah Cameron, the cultural center’s director of community relations and development, in an interview.
“We had these private cars that were owned by Blacks that actually started the jitney cabs,” Cameron said.