that he and other Negroes
in his county were wrongfully excluded from the franchise by the new
Alabama constitution. Twice was his case thrown out on technicalities,
the first time it was said because he was petitioning for the right to
vote under a constitution whose validity he denied, and the second time
because the Federal right that he claimed had not been passed on in the
state court from whose decision he appealed. Thus the supreme tribunal
in the United States evaded at the time any formal judgment as to the
real validity of the new suffrage provisions. In 1903, moreover, in
Alabama, Negroes charged with petty offenses and sometimes with no
offense at all were still sent to convict farms or turned over to
contractors. They were sometimes compelled to work as peons for a length
of time; and they were flogged, starved, hunted with bloodhounds, and
sold from one contractor to another in direct violation of law. One
Joseph Patterson borrowed $1 on a Saturday, promising to pay the
amount on the following Tuesday morning. He did not get to town at the
appointed time, and he was arrested and carried before a justice of the
peace, who found him guilty of obtaining money under false pretenses. No
time whatever was given to the Negro to get witnesses or a lawyer, or to
get money with which to pay his fine and the costs of court. He was sold
for $25 to a man named Hardy, who worked him for a year and then sold
him for $40 to another man named Pace. Patterson tried to escape, but
was recaptured and given a sentence of six months more. He was then
required to serve for an additional year to pay a doctor's bill. When
the case at last attracted attention, it appeared that for $1 borrowed
in 1903 he was not finally to be released before 1906. Another case of
interest and importance was set in New York. In the spring of 1909
a pullman porter was arrested on the charge of stealing a card-case
containing $20. The next day he was discharged as innocent. He then
entered against his accuser a suit for $10,000 damages. The jury awarded
him $2,500, which amount the court reduced to $300, Justice P.H. Dugro
saying that a Negro when falsely imprisoned did not suffer the same
amount of injury that a white man would suffer--an opinion which the New
York _Age_ very naturally characterized as "one of the basest and most
offensive ever handed down by a New York judge."

In the history of the question of the mulatto two facts are outstanding.