While men were on the battlefield fighting a war that had turned towards emancipation, the women on the Northern home front were already adjusting to the effects. Though many northerners did not support slavery, hardly any condoned full racial equality. Northern blacks were still confined to many legal restrictions and social segregation, such as not being able to serve on juries, testify against whites or enter into interracial marriages(1).   After President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, change came slowly in the northern states. Both blacks and whites engaged in protests over segregated school systems and segregated church pews. However some New England churches, in an attempt to lessen the racial divided, invited black ministers to preach before mixed congregations(2).



Though some cities and states made efforts to end segregation, the racial divide remained both vast and prominent. So, while some of their men were volunteering in the war, black women at home took racial equality into their own hands. They took their protests to the streets and used public streetcars as somewhat of a platform to voice their grievances. These streetcars served a wide variety of cities’ population and were segregated, though different cities enforced the segregation in different measures. For example, New York and New Orleans had designated cars for blacks(3).  In Cincinnati, where blacks were denied service, a conductor dragged Sarah Fossett, a notable hairdresser and civil rights activist, for more than a block when she refused to leave the streetcar(4).

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