eats
in the dress-circle of every theatre, and in the grand-stand of every
baseball park, for Negro patrons. The reason why this is not done is
perfectly obvious: it would be intolerable to the average Southern
man or woman to sit through the hours of a theatrical performance or a
baseball game on terms of equal accommodation with Negroes, even with a
screen between. Negroes would look out of place, out of status, in the
dress circle or the grand-stand; their place, signifying their status,
is the peanut-gallery, or the bleachers. There, neither they nor others
will be tempted to forget that as things are they must continue.

How shall we account for the "intense feeling" (to quote the language
of the mayor or New Orleans) occasioned in that city one day, last July,
when it was flashed over the wires that the first prize in the National
Spelling Contest had been won by a Negro girl, in competition with white
children from New Orleans and other Southern cities? The indignation of
at least one of the leading New Orleans papers verged upon hysterics;
the editor's rhetoric visited upon some foulest crime could hardly
have been more inflamed than in denunciation of the fact that, on the
far-away shore of Lake Erie, New Orleans white children had competed at
a spelling bee with a Negro girl. The superintendent of the New Orleans
schools was roundly denounced in many quarters for permitting his wards
to compete with a Negro; and there were broad hints in "Letters from the
People" to the papers that his resignation was in order.

Certainly in the days following the National Spelling Contest the race
problem was in evidence, if it ever was, in New Orleans and the South!
Did it show itself, then, as the problem of Negro crime, or brutality,
or laziness? Assuredly not! Of the Negro's personal repulsiveness? By
no means! There was no evidence of Negro criminality, or brutality, or
laziness in the Negro child's victory; and every day in the South,
in their games and otherwise, hundreds of white children of the best
families are in closer personal contact with little Negroes than were
the white children who took part in the Cleveland spelling bee. The
"intense feeling" can be explained on one ground only: the Negro girl's
victory was an affront to the tradition of the Negro's inferiority;
it suggested--perhaps indicated--that, given equal opportunities, all
Negroes are not necessarily the intellectual inferiors of all white
people.