Such is the American group against which these discriminating laws have directly and indirectly aimed. In the historic decade (1860 to 1870) many forms of discrimination and distinction began to appear in the laws of the South: in public travel, in the courts and in the matter of the suffrage. In 1865 and 1866 "Jim Crow" laws were passed in Florida, Mississippi and Texas, but not in the other states until 1881 when Tennessee started the new era of "Jim Crow," which has since overrun the whole South and threatens, as did slavery itself, to invade the North. Is it not queer that this passion should have gained such headway so long after slavery? It would seem that the more the Negro advances in education and refinement, the less acceptable he becomes to a large number of white people. In North Carolina or South Carolina a Negro may be taken into the white people’s car if he be a criminal or a lunatic; but if he be a gentleman and a scholar, it will be a serious offense against earth and heaven, subject to heavy fines,—and when his train reaches Georgia, even the conductor may be fined one thousand dollars! This race distinction on the cars serves no useful, honorable purpose which classified passenger tickets would not serve. But of all the humiliation, wrong and robbery possible against a free people, the devil and the Sicilian tyrants working together could never have devised a more ingenious scheme than the "Jim Crow" car. As to the courts. Until 1870 the laws of Iowa forbade the Negro to practice law; many states sought to invalidate or restrict the testimony of a Negro witness against a white person; and most reluctantly of all has any state conceded the Negro the right to be a juror, even where both parties to the suit are Negroes. In law and in theory the Fifteenth Amendment, March 30, 1870, repealed all statutes and nullified all constitutional clauses discriminating against people on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, but in practice in the United States the Negro is still handicapped as a lawyer, discredited as a witness and almost universally excluded from juries. This is queer again in the face of the almost unanimous testimony of the courts to the effect that the Negro juryman is more inclined to convict a real Negro criminal than is the white juryman.