The men who made this brave report did not mince matters. They called murder, murder; and robbery, robbery. Read this:

At first, after the riot, there was an inclination in some quarters to say:

“Well, at any rate, the riot cleared the atmosphere. The Negroes have had their lesson. There won’t be any more trouble soon.”

But read the sober conclusions in the Committee’s report. The riot did not prevent further crime.

In trying to find out exactly the point of view and the feeling of the Negroes—which is most important in any honest consideration of conditions—I was handed the following letter, written by a young coloured man, a former resident in Atlanta now a student in the North. He is writing frankly to a friend. It is valuable as showing a real point of view—the bitterness, the hopelessness, the distrust.

“... It is possible that you have formed at least a good idea of how we feel as the result of the horrible eruption in Georgia. I have not spoken to a Caucasian on the subject since then. But, listen: How would you feel, if with our history, there came a time when, after speeches and papers and teachings you acquired property and were educated, and were a fairly good man, it were impossible for you to walk the street (for whose maintenance you were taxed) with your sister without being in mortal fear of death if you resented any insult offered to her? How would you feel if you saw a governor, a mayor, a sheriff, whom you could not oppose at the polls, encourage by deed or word or both, a mob of ‘best’ and worst citizens to slaughter your people in the streets and in their own homes and in their places of business? Do you think that you could resist the same wrath that caused God to slay the Philistines and the Russians to throw bombs? I can resist it, but with each new outrage I am less able to resist it. And yet if I gave way to my feelings I should become just like other men ... of the mob! But I do not ... not quite, and I must hurry through the only life I shall live on earth, tortured by these experiences and these horrible impulses, with no hope of ever getting away from them. They are ever present, like the just God, the devil, and my conscience.

“If there were no such thing as Christianity we should be hopeless.”

Besides this effect on the Negroes the riot for a week or more practically paralysed the city of Atlanta. Factories were closed, railroad cars were left unloaded in the yards, the street-car system was crippled, and there was no cab-service (cab-drivers being Negroes), hundreds of servants deserted their places, the bank clearings slumped by hundreds of thousands of dollars, the state fair, then just opening, was a failure. It was, indeed, weeks before confidence was fully restored and the city returned to its normal condition.

Who Made Up the Mob?

One more point I wish to make before taking up the extraordinary reconstructive work which followed the riot. I have not spoken of the men who made up the mob. We know the dangerous Negro class—after all a very small proportion of the entire Negro population. There is a corresponding low class of whites quite as illiterate as the Negroes.

The poor white hates the Negro, and the Negro dislikes the poor white. It is in these lower strata of society, where the races rub together in unclean streets, that the fire is generated. Decatur and Peters streets, with their swarming saloons and dives, furnish the point of contact. I talked with many people who saw the mobs at different times, and the universal testimony was that it was made up largely of boys and young men, and of the low criminal and semi-criminal class. The ignorant Negro and the uneducated white; there lies the trouble!

This idea that 115,000 people of Atlanta—respectable, law-abiding, good citizens, white and black—should be disgraced before the world by a few hundred criminals was what aroused the strong, honest citizenship of Atlanta to vigorous action.

The riot brought out all that was worst in human nature; the reconstruction brought out all that was best and finest.

Almost the first act of the authorities was to close every saloon in the city, afterward revoking all the licences—and for two weeks no liquor was sold in the city. The police, at first accused of not having done their best in dealing with the mob, arrested a good many white rioters, and Judge Broyles, to show that the authorities had no sympathy with such disturbers of the peace, sent every man brought before him, twenty-four in all, to the chain gang for the largest possible sentence, without the alternative of a fine. The grand jury met and boldly denounced the mob; its report said in part:

“That the sensationalism of the afternoon papers in the presentation of the criminal news to the public prior to the riots of Saturday night, especially in the case of the Atlanta News, deserves our severest condemnation.”

But the most important and far-reaching effect of the riot was in arousing the strong men of the city. It struck at the pride of those men of the South, it struck at their sense of law and order, it struck at their business interests. On Sunday following the first riot a number of prominent men gathered at the Piedmont Hotel, and had a brief discussion; but it was not until Tuesday afternoon, when the worst of the news from Brownsville had come in, that they gathered in the court-house with the serious intent of stopping the riot at all costs. Most of the prominent men of Atlanta were present. Sam D. Jones, president of the Chamber of Commerce, presided. One of the first speeches was made by Charles T. Hopkins, who had been the leading spirit in the meetings on Sunday and Monday. He expressed with eloquence the humiliation which Atlanta felt.

“Saturday evening at eight o’clock,” he said, “the credit of Atlanta was good for any number of millions of dollars in New York or Boston or any financial centre; to-day we couldn’t borrow fifty cents. The reputation we have been building up so arduously for years has been swept away in two short hours. Not by men who have made and make Atlanta, not by men who represent the character and strength of our city, but by hoodlums, understrappers and white criminals. Innocent Negro men have been struck down for no crime whatever, while peacefully enjoying the life and liberty guaranteed to every American citizen. The Negro race is a child race. We are a strong race, their guardians. We have boasted of our superiority and we have now sunk to this level—we have shed the blood of our helpless wards. Christianity and humanity demand that we treat the Negro fairly. He is here, and here to stay. He only knows how to do those things we teach him to do; it is our Christian duty to protect him. I for one, and I believe I voice the best sentiment of this city, am willing to lay down my life rather than to have the scenes of the last few days repeated.”

The Plea of a Negro Physician

In the midst of the meeting a coloured man arose rather doubtfully. He was, however, promptly recognized as Dr. W. F. Penn, one of the foremost coloured physicians of Atlanta, a graduate of Yale College—a man of much influence among his people. He said that he had come to ask the protection of the white men of Atlanta. He said that on the day before a mob had come to his home; that ten white men, some of whose families he knew and had treated professionally, had been sent into his house to look for concealed arms; that his little girl had run to them, one after another, and begged them not to shoot her father; that his life and the lives of his family had afterward been threatened, so that he had had to leave his home; that he had been saved from a gathering mob by a white man in an automobile.

“What shall we do?” he asked the meeting—and those who heard his speech said that the silence was profound. “We have been disarmed: how shall we protect our lives and property? If living a sober, industrious, upright life, accumulating property and educating his children as best he knows how, is not the standard by which a coloured man can live and be protected in the South, what is to become of him? If the kind of life I have lived isn’t the kind you want, shall I leave and go North?

“When we aspire to be decent and industrious we are told that we are bad examples to other coloured men. Tell us what your standards are for coloured men. What are the requirements under which we may live and be protected? What shall we do?”

When he had finished, Colonel A. J. McBride, a real estate owner and a Confederate veteran, arose and said with much feeling that he knew Dr. Penn and that he was a good man, and that Atlanta meant to protect such men.

“If necessary,” said Colonel McBride, “I will go out and sit on his porch with a rifle.”

Such was the spirit of this remarkable meeting. Mr. Hopkins proposed that the white people of the city express their deep regret for the riot and show their sympathy for the Negroes who had suffered at the hands of the mob by raising a fund of money for their assistance. Then and there $4,423 was subscribed, to which the city afterward added $1,000.

But this was not all. These men, once thoroughly aroused, began looking to the future, to find some new way of preventing the recurrence of such disturbances.

A committee of ten, appointed to work with the public officials in restoring order and confidence, consisted of some of the foremost citizens of Atlanta:

Charles T. Hopkins, Sam D. Jones, President of the Chamber of Commerce; L. Z. Rosser, president of the Board of Education; J. W. English, president of the Fourth National Bank; Forrest Adair, a leading real estate owner; Captain W. D. Ellis, a prominent lawyer; A. B. Steele, a wealthy lumber merchant; M. L. Collier, a railroad man; John E. Murphy, capitalist; and H. Y. McCord, president of a wholesale grocery house.

One of the first and most unexpected things that this committee did was to send for several of the leading Negro citizens of Atlanta: the Rev. H. H. Proctor, B. J. Davis, editor of the Independent, a Negro journal, the Rev. E. P. Johnson, the Rev. E. R. Carter, the Rev. J. A. Rush, and Bishop Holsey.

Committees of the Two Races Meet

This was the first important occasion in the South upon which an attempt was made to get the two races together for any serious consideration of their differences.

They held a meeting. The white men asked the Negroes, “What shall we do to relieve the irritation?” The Negroes said that they thought that coloured men were treated with unnecessary roughness on the street-cars and by the police. The white members of the committee admitted that this was so and promised to take the matter up immediately with the street-car company and the police department, which was done. The discussion was harmonious. After the meeting Mr. Hopkins said:

“I believe those Negroes understood the situation better than we did. I was astonished at their intelligence and diplomacy. They never referred to the riot: they were looking to the future. I didn’t know that there were such Negroes in Atlanta.”

Out of this beginning grew the Atlanta Civic League. Knowing that race prejudice was strong, Mr. Hopkins sent out 2,000 cards, inviting the most prominent men in the city to become members. To his surprise 1,500 immediately accepted, only two refused, and those anonymously; 500 men not formally invited were also taken as members. The league thus had the great body of the best citizens of Atlanta behind it. At the same time Mr. Proctor and his committee of Negroes had organised a Coloured Co-operative Civic League, which secured a membership of 1,500 of the best coloured men in the city. A small committee of Negroes met a small committee of the white league.

Fear was expressed that there would be another riotous outbreak during the Christmas holidays, and the league proceeded with vigour to prevent it. New policemen were put on, and the committee worked with Judge Broyles and Judge Roan in issuing statements warning the people against lawlessness. They secured an agreement among the newspapers not to publish sensational news; the sheriff agreed, if necessary, to swear in some of the best men in town as extra deputies; they asked that saloons be closed at four o’clock on Christmas Eve; and through the Negro committee, they brought influence to bear to keep all coloured people off the streets. When two county police got drunk at Brownsville and threatened Mrs. Fambro, the wife of one of the Negroes killed in the riot, a member of the committee, Mr. Seeley, publisher of the Georgian, informed the sheriff and sent his automobile to Brownsville, where the policemen were arrested and afterward discharged from the force. As a result, it was the quietest Christmas Atlanta had had in years.

But the most important of all the work done, because of the spectacular interest it aroused, was the defence of a Negro charged with an assault upon a white woman. It is an extraordinary and dramatic story.

Does a Riot Prevent Further Crime?

Although many people said that the riot would prevent any more Negro crime, several attacks on white women occurred within a few weeks afterward. On November 13th Mrs. J. D. Camp, living in the suburbs of Atlanta, was attacked in broad daylight in her home and brutally assaulted by a Negro, who afterward robbed the house and escaped. Though the crime was treated with great moderation by the newspapers, public feeling was intense. A Negro was arrested, charged with the crime. Mr. Hopkins and his associates believed that the best way to secure justice and prevent lynchings was to have a prompt trial. Accordingly, they held a conference with Judge Roan, as a result of which three lawyers in the city, Mr. Hopkins, L. Z. Rosser, and J. E. McClelland, were appointed to defend the accused Negro, serving without pay. A trial-jury, composed of twelve citizens, among the most prominent in Atlanta, was called—one of the ablest juries ever drawn in Georgia. There was a determination to have immediate and complete justice.

The Negro arrested, one Joe Glenn, had been completely identified by Mrs. Camp as her assailant. Although having no doubt of his guilt, the attorneys went at the case thoroughly. The first thing they did was to call in two members of the Negro committee, Mr. Davis and Mr. Carter. These men went to the jail and talked with Glenn, and afterward they all visited the scene of the crime. They found that Glenn, who was a man fifty years old with grandchildren, bore an excellent reputation. He rented a small farm about two miles from Mrs. Camp’s home and had some property; he was sober and industrious. After making a thorough examination and getting all the evidence they could, they came back to Atlanta, persuaded, in spite of the fact that the Negro had been positively identified by Mrs. Camp—which in these cases is usually considered conclusive—that Glenn was not guilty. It was a most dramatic trial; at first, when Mrs. Camp was placed on the stand she failed to identify Glenn; afterward, reversing herself she broke forth into a passionate denunciation of him. But after the evidence was all in, the jury retired, and reported two minutes later with a verdict “Not guilty.” Remarkably enough, just before the trial was over the police informed the court that another Negro, named Will Johnson, answering Mrs. Camp’s description, had been arrested, charged with the crime. He was subsequently identified by Mrs. Camp.

Without this energetic defence, an innocent, industrious Negro would certainly have been hanged—or if the mob had been ahead of the police, as it usually is, he would have been lynched.

But what of Glenn afterward?

When the jury left the box Mr. Hopkins turned to Glenn and said:

“Well, Joe, what do you think of the case?”

He replied: “Boss I ’spec’s they will hang me, for that lady said I was the man, but they won’t hang me, will they, ’fore I sees my wife and chilluns again?”

He was kept in the tower that night and the following day for protection against a possible lynching. Plans were made by his attorneys to send him secretly out of the city to the home of a farmer in Alabama, whom they could trust with the story. Glenn’s wife was brought to visit the jail and Glenn was told of the plans for his safety, and instructed to change his name and keep quiet until the feeling of the community could be ascertained.

A ticket was purchased by his attorneys, with a new suit of clothes, hat, and shoes. He was taken out of jail about midnight under a strong guard, and safely placed on the train. From that day to this he has never been heard of. He did not go to Alabama. The poor creature, with the instinct of a hunted animal, did not dare after all to trust the white men who had befriended him. He is a fugitive, away from his family, not daring, though innocent, to return to his home.

Other Reconstruction Movements

Another strong movement also sprung into existence. Its inspiration was religious. Ministers wrote a series of letters to the Atlanta Constitution. Clark Howell, its editor, responded with an editorial entitled “Shall We Blaze the Trail?” W. J. Northen, Ex-Governor of Georgia, and one of the most highly respected men in the state, took up the work, asking himself, as he says:

“What am I to do, who have to pray every night?”

He answered that question by calling a meeting at the Coloured Y. M. C. A. building, where some twenty white men met an equal number of Negroes, mostly preachers, and held a prayer meeting.

The South still looks to its ministers for leadership—and they really lead. The sermons of men like the Rev. John E. White, the Rev. C. B. Wilmer, the Rev. W. W. Landrum, who have spoken with power and ability against lawlessness and injustice to the Negro, have had a large influence in the reconstruction movement.

Ex-Governor Northen travelled through the state of Georgia, made a notable series of speeches, urged the establishment of law and order organisations, and met support wherever he went. He talked against mob-law and lynching in plain language. Here are some of the things he said:

“We shall never settle this until we give absolute justice to the Negro. We are not now doing justice to the Negro in Georgia.

“Get into contact with the best Negroes; there are plenty of good Negroes in Georgia. What we must do is to get the good white folks to leaven the bad white folks and the good Negroes to leaven the bad Negroes.”

“There must be no aristocracy of crime: a white fiend is as much to be dreaded as a black brute.”

These movements did not cover specifically, it will be observed, the enormously difficult problems of politics, and the political relationships of the races, nor the subject of Negro education, nor the most exasperating of all the provocatives—those problems which arise from human contact in street cars, railroad trains, and in life generally.

That they had to meet the greatest difficulties in their work is shown by such an editorial as the following, published December 12th by the Atlanta Evening News:

On January 31, 1907, the newspaper which published this editorial went into the hands of a receiver—its failure being due largely to the strong public sentiment against its course before and during the riot.

After the excitement of the riot and the evil results which followed it began to disappear it was natural that the reconstruction movements should quiet down. Ex-Governor Northen continued his work for many months and is indeed, still continuing it: and there is no doubt that his campaigns have had a wide influence. The feeling that the saloons and dives of Atlanta were partly responsible for the riot was a powerful factor in the anti-saloon campaign which took place in 1907 and resulted in closing every saloon in the state of Georgia on January 1, 1908. And the riot and the revulsion which followed it will combine to make a recurrence of such a disturbance next to impossible.

CHAPTER II

The same consuming interest exists among the Negroes. A very large part of their conversation deals with the race question. I had been at the Piedmont Hotel only a day or two when my Negro waiter began to take especially good care of me. He flecked off imaginary crumbs and gave me unnecessary spoons. Finally, when no one was at hand, he leaned over and said:

“I understand you’re down here to study the Negro problem.”

“Yes,” I said, a good deal surprised. “How did you know it?”

“Well, sir,” he replied, “we’ve got ways of knowing things.”

He told me that the Negroes had been much disturbed ever since the riot and that he knew many of them who wanted to go North. “The South,” he said, “is getting to be too dangerous for coloured people.” His language and pronunciation were surprisingly good. I found that he was a college student, and that he expected to study for the ministry.

“Do you talk much about these things among yourselves?” I asked.

“We don’t talk about much else,” he said. “It’s sort of life and death with us.”

Another curious thing happened not long afterward. I was lunching with several fine Southern men, and they talked, as usual, with the greatest freedom in the full hearing of the Negro waiters. Somehow, I could not help watching to see if the Negroes took any notice of what was said. I wondered if they were sensitive. Finally, I put the question to one of my friends:

“Oh,” he said, “we never mind them; they don’t care.”

One of the waiters instantly spoke up:

“No, don’t mind me; I’m only a block of wood.”

First Views of the Negroes

I set out from the hotel on the morning of my arrival to trace the colour line as it appears, outwardly, in the life of such a town.

Atlanta is a singularly attractive place, as bright and new as any Western city. Sherman left it in ashes at the close of the war; the old buildings and narrow streets were swept away and a new city was built, which is now growing in a manner not short of astonishing. It has 115,000 to 125,000 inhabitants, about a third of whom are Negroes, living in more or less detached quarters in various parts of the city, and giving an individuality to the life interesting enough to the unfamiliar Northerner. A great many of them are always on the streets far better dressed and better-appearing than I had expected to see—having in mind, perhaps, the tattered country specimens of the penny postal cards. Crowds of Negroes were at work mending the pavement, for the Italian and Slav have not yet appeared in Atlanta, nor indeed to any extent anywhere in the South. I stopped to watch a group of them. A good deal of conversation was going on, here and there a Negro would laugh with great good humour, and several times I heard a snatch of a song: much jollier workers than our grim foreigners, but evidently not working so hard. A fire had been built to heat some of the tools, and a black circle of Negroes were gathered around it like flies around a drop of molasses and they were all talking while they warmed their shins—evidently having plenty of leisure.

As I continued down the street, I found that all the drivers of waggons and cabs were Negroes; I saw Negro newsboys, Negro porters, Negro barbers, and it being a bright day, many of them were in the street—on the sunny side.

I commented that evening to some Southern people I met, on the impression, almost of jollity, given by the Negro workers I had seen. One of the older ladies made what seemed to me a very significant remark.

“They don’t sing as they used to,” she said. “You should have known the old darkeys of the plantation. Every year, it seems to me, they have been losing more and more of their care-free good humour. I sometimes feel that I don’t know them any more. Since the riot they have grown so glum and serious that I’m free to say I’m scared of them!”

One of my early errands that morning led me into several of the great new office buildings, which bear testimony to the extraordinary progress of the city. And here I found one of the first evidences of the colour line for which I was looking. In both buildings, I found a separate elevator for coloured people. In one building, signs were placed reading:

In another I copied this sign:

Curiously enough, as giving an interesting point of view, an intelligent Negro with whom I was talking a few days later asked me:

“Have you seen the elevator sign in the Century Building?”

I said I had.

“How would you like to be classed with ‘freight, express and packages’?”

I found that no Negro ever went into an elevator devoted to white people, but that white people often rode in cars set apart for coloured people. In some cases the car for Negroes is operated by a white man, and in other cases, all the elevators in a building are operated by coloured men. This is one of the curious points of industrial contact in the South which somewhat surprise the Northern visitor. In the North a white workman will often refuse to work with a Negro; in the South, while the social prejudice is strong, Negroes and whites work together side by side in many kinds of employment.

I had an illustration in point not long afterward. Passing the post office, I saw several mail-carriers coming out, some white, some black, talking and laughing, with no evidence, at first, of the existence of any colour line. Interested to see what the real condition was, I went in and made inquiries. A most interesting and significant condition developed. I found that the postmaster, who is a wise man, sent Negro carriers up Peachtree and other fashionable streets, occupied by wealthy white people, while white carriers were assigned to beats in the mill districts and other parts of town inhabited by the poorer classes of white people.

“You see,” said my informant, “the Peachtree people know how to treat Negroes. They really prefer a Negro carrier to a white one; it’s natural for them to have a Negro doing such service. But if we sent Negro carriers down into the mill district they might get their heads knocked off.”

Then he made a philosophical observation:

“If we had only the best class of white folks down here and the industrious Negroes, there wouldn’t be any trouble.”

The Jim Crow Car

One of the points in which I was especially interested was the “Jim Crow” regulations, that is, the system of separation of the races in street cars and railroad trains. Next to the question of Negro suffrage, I think the people of the North have heard more of the Jim Crow legislation than of anything else connected with the Negro problem. The street car is an excellent place for observing the points of human contact between the races, betraying as it does every shade of feeling upon the part of both. In almost no other relationship do the races come together, physically, on anything like a common footing. In their homes and in ordinary employment, they meet as master and servant; but in the street cars they touch as free citizens, each paying for the right to ride, the white not in a place of command, the Negro without an obligation of servitude. Street-car relationships are, therefore, symbolic of the new conditions. A few years ago the Negro came and went in the street cars in most cities and sat where he pleased, but gradually Jim Crow laws or local regulations were passed, forcing him into certain seats at the back of the car.

While I was in Atlanta, the newspapers reported two significant new developments in the policy of separation. In Savannah Jim Crow ordinances have gone into effect for the first time, causing violent protestations on the part of the Negroes and a refusal by many of them to use the cars at all. Montgomery, Ala., about the same time, went one step further and demanded, not separate seats in the same car, but entirely separate cars for whites and blacks. There could be no better visible evidence of the increasing separation of the races, and of the determination of the white man to make the Negro “keep his place,” than the evolution of the Jim Crow regulations.

I was curious to see how the system worked out in Atlanta. Over the door of each car, I found this sign:

Sure enough, I found the white people in front and the Negroes behind. As the sign indicates, there is no definite line of division between the white seats and the black seats, as in many other Southern cities. This very absence of a clear demarcation is significant of many relationships in the South. The colour line is drawn, but neither race knows just where it is. Indeed, it can hardly be definitely drawn in many relationships, because it is constantly changing. This uncertainty is a fertile source of friction and bitterness. The very first time I was on a car in Atlanta, I saw the conductor—all conductors are white—ask a Negro woman to get up and take a seat farther back in order to make a place for a white man. I have also seen white men requested to leave the Negro section of the car.

At one time, when I was on a car the conductor shouted: “Heh, you nigger, get back there,” which the Negro, who had taken a seat too far forward, proceeded hastily to do.

No other one point of race contact is so much and so bitterly discussed among the Negroes as the Jim Crow car. I don’t know how many Negroes replied to my question: “What is the chief cause of friction down here?” with a complaint of their treatment on street cars and in railroad trains.

Why the Negro Objects to the Jim Crow Car

Fundamentally, of course they object to any separation which gives them inferior accommodations. This point of view—and I am trying to set down every point of view, both coloured and white, exactly as I find it, is expressed in many ways.

“We pay first-class fare,” said one of the leading Negroes in Atlanta, “exactly as the white man does, but we don’t get first-class service. I say it isn’t fair.”

In answer to this complaint, the white man says: “The Negro is inferior, he must be made to keep his place. Give him a chance and he assumes social equality, and that will lead to an effort at intermarriage and amalgamation of the races. The Anglo-Saxon will never stand for that.”

One of the first complaints made by the Negroes after the riot, was of rough and unfair treatment on the street cars.

The committee admitted that the Negroes were not always well treated on the cars, and promised to improve conditions. Charles T. Hopkins, a leader in the Civic League and one of the prominent lawyers of the city, told me that he believed the Negroes should be given their definite seats in every car; he said that he personally made it a practice to stand up rather than to take any one of the four back seats, which he considered as belonging to the Negroes. Two other leading men, on a different occasion, told me the same thing.

One result of the friction over the Jim Crow regulations is that many Negroes ride on the cars as little as possible. One prominent Negro I met said he never entered a car, and that he had many friends who pursued the same policy; he said that Negro street car excursions, familiar a few years ago, had entirely ceased. It is significant of the feeling that one of the features of the Atlanta riot was an attack on the street cars in which all Negroes were driven out of their seats. One Negro woman was pushed through an open window, and, after falling to the pavement, she was dragged by the leg across the sidewalk and thrown through a shop window. In another case when the mob stopped a car the motorman, instead of protecting his passengers, went inside and beat down a Negro with his brass control-lever.

Story of an Encounter on a Street Car

I heard innumerable stories from both white people and Negroes of encounters in the street cars. Dr. W. F. Penn, one of the foremost Negro physicians of the city, himself partly white, a graduate of Yale College, told me of one occasion in which he entered a car and found there Mrs. Crogman, wife of the coloured president of Clark University. Mrs. Crogman is a mulatto so light of complexion as to be practically undistinguishable from white people. Dr. Penn, who knew her well, sat down beside her and began talking. A white man who occupied a seat in front with his wife turned and said:

“Here, you nigger, get out of that seat. What do you mean by sitting down with a white woman?”

Dr. Penn replied somewhat angrily:

“It’s come to a pretty pass when a coloured man cannot sit with a woman of his own race in his own part of the car.”

The white man turned to his wife and said:

“Here, take these bundles. I’m going to thrash that nigger.”

In half a minute the car was in an uproar, the two men struggling. Fortunately the conductor and motorman were quickly at hand, and Dr. Penn slipped off the car.

Conditions on the railroad trains, while not resulting so often in personal encounters, are also the cause of constant irritation. When I came South, I took particular pains to observe the arrangement on the trains. In some cases Negroes are given entire cars at the front of the train, at other times they occupy the rear end of a combination coach and baggage car, which is used in the North as a smoking compartment. The complaint here is that, while the Negro is required to pay first-class fare, he is provided with second-class accommodations. Well-to-do Negroes who can afford to travel, also complain that they are not permitted to engage sleeping-car berths. Booker T. Washington usually takes a compartment where he is entirely cut off from the white passengers. Some other Negroes do the same thing, although they are often refused even this expensive privilege. Railroad officials with whom I talked, and it is important to hear what they say, said that it was not only a question of public opinion—which was absolutely opposed to any intermingling of the races in the cars—but that Negro travel in most places was small compared with white travel, that the ordinary Negro was unclean and careless, and that it was impractical to furnish them the same accommodations, even though it did come hard on a few educated Negroes. They said that when there was a delegation of Negroes, enough to fill an entire sleeping car, they could always get accommodations. All of which gives a glimpse of the enormous difficulties accompanying the separation of the races in the South.

Another interesting point significant of tendencies came early to my attention. They had recently finished at Atlanta one of the finest railroad stations in this country. The ordinary depot in the South has two waiting-rooms of about the same size, one for whites and one for Negroes. But when this new station was built the whole front was given up to white people, and the Negroes were assigned a side entrance, and a small waiting-room. Prominent coloured men regarded it as a new evidence of the crowding out of the Negro, the further attempt to give him unequal accommodations, to handicap him in his struggle for survival. A delegation was sent to the railroad people to protest, but to no purpose. Result: further bitterness. There are in the station two lunch-rooms, one for whites, one for Negroes.

A leading coloured man said to me:

“No Negro goes to the lunch-room in the station who can help it. We don’t like the way we have been treated.”

A Negro Boycott

Of course this was an unusually intelligent coloured man, and he spoke for his own sort; how far the same feeling of a race consciousness strong enough to carry out such a boycott as this—and it is like the boycott of a labour union—actuates the masses of ignorant Negroes is a question upon which I hope to get more light as I proceed. I have already heard more than one coloured leader complain that Negroes do not stand together. And a white planter, whom I met in the hotel, said a significant thing along this very line:

“If once the Negroes got together and saved their money, they’d soon own the country, but they can’t do it, and they never will.”

After I had begun to trace the colour line I found evidences of it everywhere—literally in every department of life. In the theatres, Negroes never sit downstairs, but the galleries are black with them. Of course, white hotels and restaurants are entirely barred to Negroes, with the result that coloured people have their own eating and sleeping places, many of them inexpressibly dilapidated and unclean. “Sleepers wanted” is a familiar sign in Atlanta, giving notice of places where for a few cents a Negro can find a bed or a mattress on the floor, often in a room where there are many other sleepers, sometimes both men and women in the same room crowded together in a manner both unsanitary and immoral. No good public accommodations exist for the educated or well-to-do Negro in Atlanta, although other cities are developing good Negro hotels. Indeed one cannot long remain in the South without being impressed with extreme difficulties which beset the exceptional coloured man.