(2) Another citizenship right is that of receiving equal accommodations on all common carriers and in all hostelries; on railroads, steamboats, in hotels, restaurants, and in all public places. When we travel, whatever we are able to pay for we are entitled to, just as other citizens are. To-day this is largely denied us. The hotels are not open to us; the restaurants are not open to us, even the little ten cent lunch counters, in this the capital city of the nation, are not open to us: we are shut out from all such places, and shut out because of the color of our skin. If we attempt to travel, and turn our faces southward, we must ride in Jim Crow cars; we must be segregated, shut up in a little compartment by ourselves. The privilege which we once enjoyed without stint of taking a sleeper or Pullman car, even that now is being taken from us. One state has even gone so far as to make it unlawful to sell a ticket to a person of color on a sleeper. That is the state of Georgia; a State that has in it Atlanta University, and Clark University, and the Atlanta Baptist College, and Spelman Seminary, and the Gammon Theological Seminary, and Haines Institute, and many other schools of learning; a State that has within its borders some of the very best type of Negroes in this country. The meaning of all this, don’t let us misunderstand: it is a part of the general policy, which is being vigorously pushed by our enemies, to fix our status as one of inferiority, by shutting us out from certain privileges. The whole thing is wrong. Such invidious distinctions ought not to be permitted in a republic. It is inconsistent with citizenship. Everything ought to be open to all citizens alike:—railroad cars, hotels, restaurants, steamboats, the schools and colleges of the land: our public schools ought to be open to all the children alike. There ought not be separate schools for the whites, and separate schools for blacks: all the children of the Republic ought to be educated together; and sooner or later it is bound to come to that. Some one has said, "It isn’t so much the Jim Crow car, as it is the Jim Crow Negro in the car." The fallacy of this statement, and its attempted mitigation or justification of the Jim Crow car, lies in the fact that the Jim Crow car has nothing whatever to do with the Jim Crow Negro. It was not instituted for him, but for all Negroes, whether Jim Crow or not: in fact, it was designed, particularly, not for the Jim Crow Negro, but for the intelligent, progressive, self-respecting Negro. If there are Jim Crow Negroes among us we owe them a duty; we ought to seek to improve them, to lift them to higher levels; but while we are doing this, don’t let us forget that there is a Jim Crow car, and what it stands for. It stands for a hostile public sentiment; it is a part of a concerted plan which seeks to degrade us, to rob us of our rights, to deprive us of privileges enjoyed by other citizens, because of the color of our skin.