is the main factor. But he will not
labor even here with the negro, but drives him out and bars the door.

"He will contribute the public funds to educate the negro and then
exert every possible influence to keep the negro from earning a
livelihood by means of that education.

"It is true, that in the goodness of his heart he will allow the negro
community to have a negro preacher, teacher, doctor, pharmacist and
jackleg lawyer, but further than this he will not go. Practically all
of the other higher forms of labor are hermetically sealed so far as
the negro is concerned.

"Thus, like Tantalus of old, we are placed in streams of water up to
our necks, but when we stoop down to drink thereof the waters recede;
luscious fruit, tempting to the eye and pleasing to the taste,
is placed above our heads, only to be wafted away by the winds of
prejudice, when, like Tantalus we reach up to grasp and eat.

OUR CIVIL RIGHTS.

"An Italian, a Frenchman, a German, a Russian, a Chinaman and a Swede
come, let us suppose, on a visit to our country.

"As they draw near our public parks they look up and see placards
forbidding somebody to enter these places. They pause to read the
signs to see who it is that is forbidden to enter.

"Unable to understand our language, they see a negro child returning
from school and they call the child to read and interpret the placard.
It reads thus: 'Negroes and dogs not allowed in here.'

"The little negro child, whose father's sweaty, unrequited toil
cleared the spot whereon the park now stands, loiters outside of
the wicker gate in company with the dogs of the foreigners and gazes
wistfully through the cracks at the children of these strangers
sporting on the lawn.

"This is but a fair sample of the treatment which our race receives
everywhere in the South.

"If we enter a place where a sign tells us that the public is served,
we do not know whether we are to be waited upon or driven out like
dogs.

"And the most shameful and hopeless feature connected with the
question of our civil rights is that the Supreme Court has lent its
official sanction to all such acts of discrimination. The highest
court in the land is the chief bulwark of caste prejudice in
democratic America.

EDUCATION.

"The race that thinks of us and treats us as we have just indicated
has absolute charge of the education of our children.

"They pay our teachers poorer salaries than they do their own; they
giv