The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
Justice Harlan contended that if the giving of instruction is not a
property right, it is one's liberty. Exposing the sophistry of the
court he remarked that if the schools must be subjected to such
segregation, why not also the Sabbath Schools and Churches? "If States
can prohibit the coeducation of the whites and blacks it may prohibit
the association of the Anglo-Saxons and Latins; of the Christians and
the Jews. Have we become so inoculated with prejudice of race,"
continued Justice Harlan, "that an American government, professedly
based on the principles of freedom, and charged with the protection of
all citizens alike, can make distinctions between such citizens in the
matter of their voluntary meeting for innocent purposes simply because
of their respective races? Further if the lower court be right, then a
State may make it a crime for white and colored persons to frequent
the same market places, at the same time, or appear in an assembly of
citizens convened to consider questions of a public or political
nature in which all citizens without regard to race, are equally
interested."
THE RIGHT TO LABOR
Although the Negro by these various decisions of the Supreme Court of
the United States had been deprived of rights essential to freedom and
citizenship in matters of voting, service upon juries, education, and
the use of common carriers, there remained even another right which
was to be infringed upon without the hope of any redress from the
United States Supreme Court. This was the right to contract, to labor.
Every honest man should live by his own labor and it is a well
established principle of democratic government, that in the exercise
of this right the individual should be free not only from interference
on the part of the government but should enjoy protection from
individuals subject to the government. Because of the development of
race prejudice into a flame of bitter antagonism among the laboring
men during the period of commercial expansion in the United States
since the Reconstruction period, the country has been all but
thoroughly organized through trades unions, so as to restrict the
Negro to menial service by written constitutions in keeping with the
caste which has so long figured conspicuously in American
institutions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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