black, brown, and
olive-tinted ignorance at that time in the South, was appalling. It is
appalling now--largely through the governing white man's fault. But
still there were in the South at that time and before then many
colored people who had obtained the rudiments of education and some
who might be truthfully called well educated. Some of these became
known to the whole country; but there might easily have been obscure
ones like Loving scattered in many communities.

Now ordinary critics are sure to cry out against my analysis of the
historical situation and remind me of Booker Washington. They will
say, "He was not lynched. He was accepted. Any Negro like him is safe,
if he behaves himself." I answer that I have no fancy for mob murder
or torture of any human being, ignorant or wise, good or bad. There
are, moreover, other answers to the riddle of that great constructive
educator's career. One is creditable to the white southerners. They
are not all eager for Negro blood. There is yet another solution.
Booker Washington surrendered many of the Negro's rights to southern
prejudices. The South liked that surrender. Northern philanthropists
occasionally liked it well enough to give money for purposes which
would tend to make the Negro useful in the ways the whites wanted him
to be, and yet to insure him a little intellectual comfort in his
life.

To return to the direct consideration of Miss Grimke's Rachel; we see
the girl, from the hour that she learns what things are done, and may
be done, in the South to the dusky sons and daughters of America, she
lives under a cloud--a sense of doom. Yet the cloud breaks now and
then. She loves so much, and especially she loves so many little
children, that she cannot fail to be happy sometimes. She also comes
to love a man, and all the possibilities of marriage and motherhood
open radiantly before her. But the shadow falls denser than ever upon
her. She sees, even in the North, the grown men of her race, no matter
how well educated, seldom able to get work befitting their ability.
All this sort of thing would not happen in every northern town but
every careful observer knows that such things do happen in many
northern villages and cities.

Little children flock around her, drawn by the magic of her incarnated
motherliness. She sees them ill-treated by their white school mates.
She has adopted a little boy, Jimmy, and she sees him suffer. She
sees a little girl, very black and