Frederick Douglass’ Paper covered the outcome in a piece headlined “Legal Rights Vindicated,” published March 2, 1855. The paper’s coverage noted the family context — Elizabeth’s grandfather, Jacob Cartwright, had been a Revolutionary War soldier; her father was the patent-holding tailor and civic leader — and it urged Black New Yorkers to act on the precedent. The paper wrote that they “must be craven indeed if they fail to follow the lead of a woman.”
This framing — the challenge to others to follow Elizabeth Jennings’s example — was an explicit call to extend the campaign beyond the Third Avenue Railroad to the other lines that still excluded or restricted Black passengers.
## What the Verdict Did Not Do
The Third Avenue Railroad Company’s immediate desegregation was real. What the verdict did not do was instantly desegregate every streetcar line in New York, or establish a binding legal rule that applied to all transit companies.
New York’s horsecar companies were private corporations, each operating under its own charter. A verdict against one did not automatically bind another. A judge’s jury instruction was persuasive and could be cited in subsequent cases, but it was not a statute, and it was not a Supreme Court ruling that would carry formal precedential weight across all courts.
The Legal Rights Association, which Thomas Jennings organized to build on the case, pursued further litigation and organizing across multiple lines. The Sixth Avenue line was one that resisted. In May 1855, the reverend James W. C. Pennington, one of the community leaders who had been central to the organizing around Elizabeth’s case, was forcibly removed from an Eighth Avenue Railroad car. He brought a lawsuit, and that suit did not end well: he lost.