On April 28, 1941, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Congressman Arthur W. Mitchell, the first African American Democrat elected to Congress, in the case Mitchell v. United States. The case challenged the discrimination Mitchell faced while traveling by train from Illinois to Arkansas, where he was forced from a first-class car into a segregated “colored” car despite having purchased a first-class ticket.

The Court ruled that under the Interstate Commerce Act, segregated facilities for Black passengers had to be “substantially equal” to those for white passengers. Though it did not strike down segregation entirely, the decision marked a rare victory against Jim Crow laws in interstate travel and set a precedent for future civil rights challenges.