and to do
all that the white man does by virtue of his American freedom and
citizenship. Nothing less than this is going to satisfy the blacks, the
Southern caste system and appearances in spots among the blacks
themselves, to the contrary notwithstanding.

But there is yet another aspect of the same subject, which tends to
produce the same result. I refer to the Southern policy of civil and
political repression and oppression of its colored population in order to
keep them within their caste of inferiority and subordination to the
whites. Discontent under such oppressive conditions is sure to arise among
the colored people, and this because of their growth and of the existence
of the hard and fast lines within which this growth must go on. For this
kind of discontent the South has no vent such as free institutions
provide. Its caste system sits upon this safety valve of democracy. Much
of the crime committed by oppressed peoples is in the nature of fullness
of life seeking greater freedom, of pent up energies seeking an outlet,
and much of the crime committed by oppressors is in the nature of
attempts, perilous always, to sit upon this safety valve of popular
governments, which is intended to relieve dangerous pressure within the
steam-chest of human expansion and progress. But the South is determined
to keep the Negro down however great may be his effort to rise. He is to
be kept down by brute force if he cannot be kept down in any other way,
below the social and industrial and political level of the lowest and most
worthless of the whites, because he is black and because they are white.

This is the meaning of the Southern movement for segregating the races, of
its jim-crow car laws and waiting-rooms. This is the meaning of the
Negro's exclusion from dining-cars and from restaurants along the line of
Southern railroads. He pays the same fare as the white passenger but he is
given inferior accommodations and in many instances these accommodations
are monstrously unequal and inferior. He is black and therefore the same
law which protects the white passenger against bad accommodations does not
apply to him. He is at the mercy of railroads, which may treat him as
badly as they choose, and there is none to say them nay. Why? Because all
these iniquitous distinctions and discriminations serve to teach colored
men and women, however intelligent and wealthy and respectable, that their
intelligence and wealth and respectabili