But why is segregation necessary? Because white Americans are afraid that their inherent superiority may not, after all, be so very evident either to the Negro or to other people. They, therefore, find it necessary to enact it into law. So we had the first Ghetto legislation in an American nation last year, in Baltimore. Hard on the heels of this followed legislative proposals along the same line in Richmond Va., Kansas City, Mo., St. Louis, Mo., and Birmingham, Ala. In Memphis, Tenn., Negroes pay taxes for public parks which they are not allowed to enter. A year ago they petitioned for a Negro park and were about to get it when 500 white citizens protested against it. That settled it with the park. But discrimination goes even further and declares that Negroes shall not possess even their lives if any white persons should want them. And so we have the institution called the lynching-bee. The professional southerner seems to love a lie dearly and continues to assert that Negroes are lynched for rape committed upon white women. Why not? It is perfectly American. If you want to kill a dog, call it mad; if you want to silence a man, call him an Anarchist, and if you want to kill a black man, call him a rapist. But let us see what the facts actually are. In the two decades from 1884 to 1904 there were 2,875 lynchings in the United States. Of these 87 per cent, or 2,499 occurred in the South. The national total was grouped as follows: 1. For alleged and attempted criminal assault, i. e., rape... 564 2. For assault and murder and for complicity................. 138 3. For murder............................................... 1,277 4. For theft, burglary and robbery.......................... 326 5. For arson................................................. 106 6. For race-prejudice (?).................................... 94 7. For unknown reasons....................................... 134 8. For simple assault........................................ 18 9. For insulting whites...................................... 18 10. For making threats......................................... 16 The causes for the remainder were: slander, miscegenation, informing, drunkenness, fraud, voodooism, violation of contract, resisting arrest, elopement, train wrecking, poisoning stock, refusing to give evidence, testifying against whites, political animosity, disobedience of quarantine regulations, passing counterfeit money, introducing smallpox, concealing criminals, cutting levees, kidnapping, gambling, riots, seduction, incest, and forcing a child to steal.