own race; moreover, by refusing decent accommodation on railroads they compel educated and refined colored women to travel in cars in which the coarsest men are herded together. Again, how can I, as a leader among my people, teach them to distinguish between the criminal and the innocent of their race so long as mobs of white men indiscriminately lynch the innocent and the criminal of my race alike on the barest suspicion? Against their actual behavior I set up in my mind a picture of how the superior race, superior in point of civilization, but still morally backward, ought to act. I can but suggest this picture, keep it in view as a constant protest, or still better as an imperative model. But I can do more. I can turn upon myself, and upon others of my own people who are in advance of the majority of them, and presently I shall be compelled to admit that amongst ourselves something of the same pride of superiority exists, something of the same prejudice against those who are lower in the scale. For there is also a stratification and a hierarchy of higher and lower among the oppressed. And the relatively higher are apt to behave toward the lower in the same fashion as their common oppressors behave toward them all. We find the same tendency among other oppressed races, as for instance in the attitude of certain of the Spanish and the German Jews toward the Polish and the Russian. Purge thyself, therefore, is the incisive monition; purify thine own nature of that pride which hurts so cruelly when it is directed upon thee from without. Let the sin committed against thee be the means of purifying thee from the like sin. This is the spiritual compensation, this the thought that leads to inward peace! FOOTNOTES: