The Story of Emma Cogler

She made a scene, all right? She didn't have to--she could have simply got up and left when told to, but she didn't. She refused. She made a scene, such a scandalous thing to do. She should have known better.

Her name was Emma Coger, and we might just say that the reason you've never heard of her is that her story is so old hat that it can't or shouldn't be news at all. But it is. It's a story about will, about dignity, and, first and foremost, about justice.

Start here. Emma was just 19 years old and a teacher--middle school, sixth grade, maybe seventh, not much older than her students. History doesn't say much about her classroom successes, whether she was on the road to becoming a master teacher. What we know--what's essential background material--is her age, her occupation, and her race.

She was Black. Sort of. She was what people called, 150 years ago, "a quadroon"--1/4 African-American, which meant, pigment-wise, she was mostly white. The court records of the time describe her color as "yellow."

"What happened?" you're saying. "Tell the story."

Emma Coger purchased a first-class breakfast ticket on a Mississippi River steamer, the S. S. Merrill, bound for Keokuk, Iowa to visit friends. She was just getting away for the weekend. The clerk gave her her ticket, scribbled with special instructions. Emma was to take her food and eat in one of the designated places blacks were appointed to eat, along the railing or in the back with the help. The clerk kindly returned a half-dollar.

That upset Emma Coger. She'd never been denied the dining room before, so she asked a white man, a fellow passenger, to buy her a ticket for lunch. He did. No problem, no scribbled writing. 

Thus, when dinner was served, Emma Coger took a chair in the elegant dining room, at which time two white women sitting at the table put up a fuss. When Emma wouldn't move, the two snarled at the indignity they were suffering with Emma's sitting right there with the real ladies. They left in a huff.

Footnote:  two women stayed at the table. Isn't that wonderful? Two stayed.

Anyway, one of the appalled women happened to be the captain's wife. Sooner rather than later, the captain himself heard of the foul disgrace and came to the aid of the clerk who'd also failed by that time to get Emma Coger to remove herself from the dining room. She was, you know, making a scene. 

Things took a bad turn. The captain and his clerk demanded and she refused. Often. Not surprisingly, tempers rose. The captain grabbed Emma Coger, and Emma Coger grabbed the table cloth so that she took with her most of the plates and silverware when the captain jerked her away. The mess went spilling to the floor. It was a scene, of course. Emma Coger made a scene right there in beneath the chandeliers. In first-class dining, you just can't have that kind of scene.

When she got home, Emma Coger was determined to sue. But no lawyer in the city would take her case, so she had to return to Keokuk to get one--and did. So the case was brought to the courts in Iowa in February of 1873, just eight year after the Civil War.

The S. S. Merrill's company lawyer, claimed Emma Coger had cut loose at them, swore like a drunken sailor and even used that very bad language right there before the Iowa Supreme Court. Can you imagine? Look it up. You'll see. 

She claimed it never happened. ""I never, never use bad language," she told the court in her defense, "and do not recollect of doing it on that occasion. I was angry because I was refused, and the way I was spoken to."

And she won, won big. Swearing was immaterial, the court said; "the sole question was, and I quote: "Had the defendant as a common carrier of passengers the authority to establish and enforce regulations denying individuals of color of the privileges and rights of white persons?"

And the answer, the court said, was no. And more.

It cannot be doubted that she was excluded from the table and cabin, not because others would have been degraded and she elevated in society, but because of prejudice entertained against her race, growing out of its former condition of servitude, a prejudice, be it proclaimed to the honor of our people, that is fast giving way to nobler sentiments, and, it is hoped, will soon be entombed with its parent, slavery.

Thus saith the Supreme Court of Iowa, February of 1873, in Emma Cogler vs. North Western Union Packet Company.

Emma Cogler was awarded $250, which she gave to her lawyer. She wasn't after money, she told people; she set about to suit the company "to vindicate the rights of my race, and my character of womanhood."

Emma Cogler wouldn't take it, so she made a scene. Praise be.

That's a story to start your day.