Have the white women of the South considered that under existing conditions they are deprived of effective influence, of effective power, to reform the morals of the men of their race? And that unless the morals of the men are reformed the morals of the whole white race will eventually decline? If the women fail to lift the level of the moral life of their men to their own higher plane, the lower morals of the men will drag downward ultimately to their level that of the women. From this inevitable conclusion and consequence there is no possible escape. But the white women of the South are powerless to lift the morals of their men without lifting at the same time the morals of the women of the black race. If, however, they steadily refuse to do so in the future, as they have refused to do so in the past, and as they refuse to do so today by the only sure means which can and will contribute mightily to effect such a purpose, viz., by making the black women their equals before the law, and at the bar of an enlightened public sentiment, and these women remain in consequence where they are today, a snare to the feet of white men, when these men trip over this snare into the hell of the senses, they will drag downward slowly but surely with them toward the level of these self-same black women the moral ideals if not the moral life of the white women of the South. And now a final word about the black woman of the South: She holds in her keeping the moral weal or woe, not only of her own race, but of the white race also. As she stands today in respect to the white man of the South, her situation is full of peril to both races. For she lives in a world where the white man may work his will on her without let or hindrance, outside of law, outside of the social code and moral restraints which protect the white woman. This black woman’s extra-legal position in the South, and her extra-social status there, render her a safe quarry for the white man’s lust. And she is pursued by him for immoral ends without dread of ill consequences to himself, either legal or social. If she resists his advances, and in many cases she does resist them, he does not abate his pursuit, but redoubles it. Her respectability, her very virtue, makes her all the more attractive to him, spurs the more his sensual desire to get possession of her person. He tracks her, endeavors to snare her in a hundred dark ways and by a hundred crooked means. On the street, in stores, in cars, going to and from church, she encounters this man, bent on her ruin. Into her very home his secret emissaries may attack her with their temptation, with their vile solicitation. Nowhere is she safe, free from his pursuit, because no law protects her, no moral sentiment casts about her person the aegis of its power. And when haply dazed by the insignia of his superior class, or his wealth, or the magic of his skin, or the creature comforts which he is able to offer her, she succumbs to his embrace and