To-day the Negro daily suffers such indignities as make the very words
Liberty and Democracy a travesty. If he rides in a trolley-car in the
South he is assigned a few rear seats. If his part of the car is
crowded and seats near the front are vacant, he must still stand. If
he takes a train he must ride in a dirty half-coach, the other half
being the baggage car; and he enters the railway station by a
side-door. In all the cities, even some of the largest, there is a
persistent endeavor to restrict his residence to some unfavorable part
of the town; witness the segregation struggles in Atlanta, St. Louis,
and Baltimore. Places of refinement and refreshment, libraries, parks,
etc., are regularly closed to him. If Negro children go to school they
stand only a fraction of a chance of getting an education--or a seat.
In Massachusetts, of the children from six to fourteen years of age,
93 per cent. are in school. In Louisiana 68.4 per cent. of the white
children are in school and 37.4 per cent. of the Negro children. In
Birmingham there is a public high school to which Negro students have
to pay to go; in all Georgia there is no public high school for
Negroes at all. Not long ago a colored man of excellent character and
standing boarded a train between Birmingham and Chattanooga,
accompanying his sister. Some white men invaded the coach and
proceeded to smoke. The colored man protested to the officials, and
forthwith both he and his sister received a beating. Such are the
incidents that drive the iron into the Negro's soul. We submit that
they are altogether unjust and entirely at variance with the
principles for which we are at war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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