e the _Free Speech_ proprietors, was forced to leave
the city for reflecting on the "honah" of white women and his paper
suppressed; but the truth remains that Afro-American men do not always
rape(?) white women without their consent.

Mr. Duke, before leaving Montgomery, signed a card disclaiming any
intention of slandering Southern white women. The editor of the _Free
Speech_ has no disclaimer to enter, but asserts instead that there are
many white women in the South who would marry colored men if such an act
would not place them at once beyond the pale of society and within the
clutches of the law. The miscegnation laws of the South only operate
against the legitimate union of the races; they leave the white man free
to seduce all the colored girls he can, but it is death to the colored man
who yields to the force and advances of a similar attraction in white
women. White men lynch the offending Afro-American, not because he is a
despoiler of virtue, but because he succumbs to the smiles of white women.

2

_The_ BLACK _and_ WHITE _of_ IT

The _Cleveland Gazette_ of January 16, 1892, publishes a case in point.
Mrs. J.S. Underwood, the wife of a minister of Elyria, Ohio, accused an
Afro-American of rape. She told her husband that during his absence in
1888, stumping the State for the Prohibition Party, the man came to the
kitchen door, forced his way in the house and insulted her. She tried to
drive him out with a heavy poker, but he overpowered and chloroformed her,
and when she revived her clothing was torn and she was in a horrible
condition. She did not know the man but could identify him. She pointed
out William Offett, a married man, who was arrested and, being in Ohio,
was granted a trial.

The prisoner vehemently denied the charge of rape, but confessed he went
to Mrs. Underwood's residence at her invitation and was criminally
intimate with her at her request. This availed him nothing against the
sworn testimony of a ministers wife, a lady of the highest respectability.
He was found guilty, and entered the penitentiary, December 14, 1888, for
fifteen years. Some time afterwards the woman's remorse led her to confess
to her husband that the man was innocent.

These are her words:

I met Offett at the Post Office. It was raining. He was polite to me,
and as I had several bundles in my arms he offered to carry them home
for me, which he did. He had a strange fascination for me, and I invited