atural antipathy to Negroes as a race, or an
acquired antipathy to Negroes in certain relations to themselves.
However that may be, there is to my mind no more pathetic side of this
many-sided question than the isolated position into which are forced
the very colored people who most need and who could best appreciate
sympathetic cooperation; and their position grows tragic when the
effort is made to couple them, whether or no, with the Negroes of the
first class I mentioned.

This latter class of colored people are well-disposed towards the
whites, and always willing to meet them more than halfway. They,
however, feel keenly any injustice or gross discrimination, and
generally show their resentment. The effort is sometimes made to
convey the impression that the better class of colored people fight
against riding in "Jim Crow" cars because they want to ride with white
people or object to being with humbler members of their own race. The
truth is they object to the humiliation of being forced to ride in
a _particular_ car, aside from the fact that that car is distinctly
inferior, and that they are required to pay full first-class fare. To
say that the whites are forced to ride in the superior car is less
than a joke. And, too, odd as it may sound, refined colored people get
no more pleasure out of riding with offensive Negroes than anybody
else would get.

I can realize more fully than I could years ago that the position of
the advanced element of the colored race is often very trying. They
are the ones among the blacks who carry the entire weight of the race
question; it worries the others very little, and I believe the only
thing which at times sustains them is that they know that they are in
the right. On the other hand, this class of colored people get a good
deal of pleasure out of life; their existence is far from being one
long groan about their condition. Out of a chaos of ignorance and
poverty they have evolved a social life of which they need not be
ashamed. In cities where the professional and well-to-do class is
large they have formed society--society as discriminating as the
actual conditions will allow it to be; I should say, perhaps, society
possessing discriminating tendencies which become rules as fast
as actual conditions allow. This statement will, I know, sound
preposterous, even ridiculous, to some persons; but as this class of
colored people is the least known of the race it is not surprising.
The