PENALTY FOR VIOLATING THE LAW
1. California: Fine not less than $50.
2. Colorado: Forfeiture between $50 and $500; misdemeanor, fine between $10 and $300, or imprisonment not over one year.
3. Connecticut: Double damages to person injured.
4. Illinois: Forfeiture between $25 and $500; misdemeanor, fine not over $500, or imprisonment not over one year.
5. Indiana: Forfeiture not over $100; misdemeanor, fine not over $100, or imprisonment not over thirty days, or both.
6. Iowa: Misdemeanor.
7. Kansas: Misdemeanor, fine between $10 and $1,000, and suit for damages.
8. Massachusetts: Forfeiture between $25 and $300; misdemeanor, fine not over $300, or imprisonment not over one year, or both.
9. Michigan: Misdemeanor, fine not over $100, or imprisonment thirty days, or both.
10. Minnesota: Forfeiture of $500 to aggrieved party; gross misdemeanor.
11. Nebraska: Misdemeanor, fine between $25 and $100 and costs.
12. New Jersey: Forfeiture of $500 to aggrieved party and costs; misdemeanor, fine between $500 and $1,000, imprisonment between thirty days and one year.
13. New York: Forfeiture between $100 and $500 to aggrieved party; misdemeanor, fine between $100 and $500, imprisonment between thirty days and ninety days, or both.
14. Ohio: Forfeiture between $50 and $500 to aggrieved party; misdemeanor, fine between $50 and $500, imprisonment between thirty days and ninety days.
15. Pennsylvania: Misdemeanor, fine between $50 and $100.
16. Rhode Island: Fine not over $100.
17. Washington: Misdemeanor, fine between $50 and $300, imprisonment between thirty days and six months.
18. Wisconsin: Not less than $5 to aggrieved party; fine not over $100, or imprisonment not over six months.
The wording of all the statutes is essentially the same. Each provides that all citizens within the jurisdiction of the State, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of servitude, are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of the various places mentioned. The offending party may be either indicted and fined or imprisoned, or he may be sued by the aggrieved party. In some States, an action by the State is a bar to an action by the party and vice versa. One who aids or abets in a discrimination against a person on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude is punished to the same extent as the one actually committing the act.
Heretofore only legislative enactments, State and Federal, as to the civil rights of Negroes have been considered. It is well now to turn to the courts to see how the laws have been interpreted as regards various public places.
HOTELS
Only six States expressly forbid race distinctions in hotels. But it may be assumed that the sixteen States which mention inns mean to include hotels.
In 1876 a Negro minister applied for a room at a Philadelphia hotel and was refused accommodation, though one of the guests offered to share his room with him. At that time there was no law in Pennsylvania requiring hotel-keepers to receive colored persons; but the Federal court[262] held that the clerk might be liable under the Federal Civil Rights Bill of 1875.
In 1898 one Russ applied for a license to open a hotel in Pennsylvania. In granting it, the court[263] took the occasion to express its view on race distinctions in the following words: “A sober, respectable, and well-behaved colored man or woman is entitled under the law of Pennsylvania to be received in any house of entertainment and be treated in the same manner as any other guest. It is time that race discrimination ceased in this State.... No one objects any longer to his [the Negro’s] presence in a public conveyance or place of entertainment; thus far the prejudice of race has been overcome; it is quite certain that the objection to his presence in a hotel or restaurant will also pass away as soon as his right under the law to be there is recognized in fact as it now is by the letter of the statute.... It would be vain to deny that some race prejudice still exists among us, but the law does not countenance it, and good citizens should strive to rise above it. We trust the effort will be made and that toleration and moderation will mark the conduct of both races.”
In 1896 the members of the Indiana University football team went to the Nutt House in Crawfordsville, Indiana, for accommodation. One of the members of the team was a Negro. The clerk refused to take the Negro in with the rest of the guests, but offered to let him eat at the “ordinary.” The Negro, being a minor, brought suit through his next friend, and the Indiana[264] court held that the Civil Rights Bill of the State could not be satisfied by separate accommodations.
There is no case of race discrimination in the hotels of Massachusetts that has reached the higher courts, but in April, 1896, the following resolution[265] was passed by the General Court of the State:
“Whereas, On the twenty-ninth day of January, eighteen ninety-six, the Reverend Benjamin W. Arnett, D.D., of Wilberforce, Ohio, senior bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, president of the board of trustees of Wilberforce University, and member of many learned societies, was refused entertainment at certain reputable hotels in the city of Boston, because he was a colored man, in spite of the statute laws against discrimination on account of color; therefore,
“Resolved, That the senate and house of representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in general court assembled, successors of those bodies which repeatedly elected Charles Sumner to the Senate of the United States, and for four years received messages from John A. Andrew, hereby express their severest reprobation of such discrimination and their firm conviction of the truth of the clause of the Declaration of Independence wherein all men are declared to be created equal; and it is further
“Resolved, That still more to be reprobated is the sentiment of any part of the public against any class of our fellow citizens whereby such discrimination is rendered possible, and that a vigorous campaign for statute rights by the persons most aggrieved will meet the hearty approval and coöperation of the two branches of the General Court.” This is very significant as showing the actual attitude of the hotels of Boston toward receiving Negroes. Whether the “vigorous campaign” was conducted one cannot tell; certainly no case appears to have reached the courts. And there is in Boston at present a Negro hotel.
The manager of the Lucerne Hotel in New York City in 1905, refused to lease a suite to a woman because she was a Jewess. It was a family hotel, containing small suites like those found in an ordinary apartment house, rented upon annual leases, transients not being solicited. The New York court[266] held that it was not a hotel in the sense that the manager must receive all applicants without regard to race or color. Of course, this case did not concern the Negro, but the same principle is involved.
RESTAURANTS
Race discrimination in restaurants is prohibited by thirteen States; in taverns, by one; in eating-houses, by eleven; in boarding-houses, by one; in cafés, by one; in chop-houses, by one; and at lunch-counters, by one. These will be considered under the general head of restaurants.
In 1881 a Negro was refused accommodation in a restaurant in New York. At that time the laws of the State prohibited discrimination in inns. The restaurant-keeper argued as a defence in the suit that followed that the restaurant was not included in the term “inns.” The court[267] held that the legislature meant by “inn” a place that furnished both lodging and food to guests, that “restaurant” had no fixed legal meaning, and that the declaration was sufficient if it said “inn” and then explained it by calling it a restaurant.
A Negro went to a restaurant in Detroit in 1887 and asked for accommodation. The clerk told him that he could not be served on the restaurant side, but that he would be served if he went over on the saloon side. The colored man complained to the proprietor and was told that it was the rule of the house not to serve Negroes in the restaurant room. The statute of Michigan required full and equal accommodation in restaurants. The court[268] held that the statute would not be satisfied if the Negro were given as good accommodations but in a different room, saying: “In Michigan there must be and is an absolute, unconditional equality of white and colored men before the law.... Whatever right a white man has in a public place, the black man has also.”
In 1897 a colored man went into a restaurant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After sitting at the table forty minutes without having his order taken, he complained, and was told that he was not served because he was colored. He left, and later brought suit. At the trial, it appeared that the discrimination was not with the sanction of the proprietor, that he had told the waiter to serve Negroes, that the waiter had refused to do so and was discharged therefor. Nevertheless, the court[269] held that the proprietor was liable for the act of his servant, and gave compensatory damages to the Negro.
The next year, a restaurant keeper refused to accommodate a Negro in Lucas County, Ohio, and the court[270] allowed the Negro to recover the penalty prescribed by the law. The case was decided on a question of evidence.
In 1905 a Negro was serving on the jury in a civil case in Iowa. The bailiff had arranged with a boarding-house to serve meals. When the Negro, along with the other jurors, went for his meals, the boarding-house keeper refused to allow him to sit at the same table with the others. It was not questioned that this was in violation of the Civil Rights Bill of the State if the boarding-house was an “eating-house” within the terms of the statute. The court[271] charged the jury that such an eating-house as would come within the statute must be a place where meals are served to anyone applying at the same prices charged to all, but that, if meals are served only in pursuance of a previous arrangement for particular individuals, rather than anyone who may apply, it is a private boarding-house and not within the statute.
BARBER-SHOPS
Thirteen States provide that barbers must serve all persons without regard to race or color.
In 1889 a barber in Lincoln, Nebraska, refused to shave a Negro because he was “colored.” The Civil Rights Bill of that State mentions barbers. The court[272] held: “A barber, by opening a shop and putting out his sign, thereby invites every orderly and well-behaved person who may desire his services to enter his shop during business hours. The statute will not permit him to say to one, you were a slave or the son of a slave, therefore I will not shave you. Such prejudices are unworthy of our better manhood, and are clearly prohibited by the statute.” Barber-shops were included within the provisions of the Massachusetts Civil Rights Bill in 1893, but, as a matter of fact, Negroes are not even now given the same accommodations as whites in barber-shops in Massachusetts.
The statute of Connecticut requires equality of service in “places of public accommodation.” A barber refused to serve one Faulkner because he was a Negro, and the latter brought suit on the ground that a barber-shop is a place of public accommodation and, hence, within the Civil Rights Bill of the State. The court[273] held that the barber-shop is not, in its nature, different from the places of business run for private gain, and that the common law has never recognized it as possessing the quality of a place of public accommodation, as a hotel, public conveyance, etc.
It may be added here that most of the cases have involved the point as to what are places of public accommodation or amusement or resort. If the place is mentioned in the Civil Rights Bill, it is, of course, within the prohibition, and it is a violation of the statute even to require separate accommodations, although equal in every other respect. But a vast deal of litigation has arisen out of instances of Negroes being denied accommodation in places considered public in their nature but which are not mentioned in the Civil Rights Bill of the State wherein the case arises.
BOOTBLACK STANDS
In the year 1901, Basso, a bootblack in the basement of one of the business houses of Rochester, New York, refused to serve Burks because the latter was a Negro. The law of New York, as has been seen, requires full and equal accommodations in hotels and “other places of public accommodation.” The question, therefore, was: Is a bootblack stand a place of “public accommodation”? The municipal court of Rochester, in which Burks brought suit, gave judgment for him, thereby answering the question in the affirmative. The county court reversed the decision. The appellate division reversed the county court and sustained the municipal. The court of appeals[274] reversed the appellate division thereby sustaining the county court, saying: “A bootblacking stand may be said to be a place of public accommodation, like the store of a dry goods merchant, a grocer, or the proverbial ‘butcher, baker, and candlestick maker’; but that is very far from placing it in the same category with the places specifically named in the statute. Inns, hotels, and public conveyances are places of public accommodation in the broadest sense, because they have always been denominated as such under the common law. Bath-houses and barber-shops are not to be regarded as included within the statute under the general phrase, ‘and all other places of public accommodation.’ There is no more relation between a bootblacking stand and a public conveyance than there is between a theatre or music-hall and a bath-house or barber-shop. There is, it is true, a superficial resemblance between the occupation of the barber and that of the bootblack, in the sense that both minister to the personal comfort and convenience of others; but the same argument could be extended far beyond the limits necessary to demonstrate that not ‘all other places of public accommodation’ are included by relation within the category of the things specifically enumerated in the statute.”
BILLIARD-ROOMS
In Massachusetts in 1866, a certain Negro was refused, because of his race or color, the use of a billiard-room. At that time a statute of the Commonwealth required equal accommodation in public places of amusement. The Supreme Court[275] of Massachusetts, in which the Negro’s case was finally heard, held that there was no proof that the room was licensed, and added: “It cannot be supposed that it was the intent of the legislature to prescribe the manner in which persons should use their own premises or permit others to use them, if they did not carry on therein an occupation or business, or suffer other persons to appropriate them to a purpose, which required a license in order to render such an appropriation lawful.”
SALOONS
Only two States, Minnesota and Wisconsin, mention saloons in their Civil Rights Bills. And in Minnesota, they were not added till 1899, as a result of the following case: A Negro was denied accommodation in a saloon. At that time, the statute required equal accommodations in inns and “places of public resort, refreshment, accommodation, or entertainment.” The court[276] of that State, in passing on the case, held that a saloon is not among the other “places of public refreshment.” The court suggests that “or other” means “other such like” and includes only places of the same nature as those already mentioned specifically in the statute. About the Negro, the court said: “It is a well-known fact that, owing to an unreasonable race prejudice which still exists to some extent, the promiscuous entertainment of persons of different races in places where intoxicating drinks are sold not infrequently result in personal conflicts, especially when the passions of men are inflamed by liquor. Hence the legislature might have omitted saloons for that reason.” The next year the legislature answered otherwise by adding saloons to the Civil Rights Bill.
In 1899 a bar-keeper in Ohio charged a Negro thirty cents for a cocktail, the regular price to white customers being only fifteen cents. The Civil Rights Bill of Ohio did not mention saloons, but said “other places of public accommodation and amusement.” The court[277] held that saloons were not included, adding, in the same spirit as the Minnesota court “... nor should we interpret this statute as encouraging a tariff which the clearly defined policy of the State discourages.”
A statute of Louisiana[278] of 1908 requires separate saloons for white and colored persons. The Louisiana court,[279] in July, 1909, held that the sale of liquor to white and colored persons must not be conducted in the same building, and that the statute is not obeyed by providing separate bars in the same building. The saloon keeper had attempted to avoid paying taxes on two saloons by operating two bars in the same building.
In Atlanta,[280] before State prohibition began, there were separate saloons for the white and colored people. An ordinance of Nashville,[281] Tennessee, which went into effect July 7, 1907, required the segregation of the races in saloons.
SODA FOUNTAINS
The keeper of a soda fountain in Illinois in 1896 refused to sell cold drinks to a Negro. At that time the law required equal accommodation in inns and “all other places of accommodation and amusement.” The court[282] of that State held that a soda fountain is not such a place of accommodation or amusement. “Such a place,” the court argued, “can be considered a place of accommodation or amusement to no greater extent than a places where dry goods or clothing, boots and shoes, hats and caps, or groceries, are dispensed. The personal liberty of an individual in his business transactions, and his freedom from restrictions, is a question of utmost moment, and no construction can be adopted by which an individual right of action will be included as controlled within a legislative enactment, unless clearly expressed in such enactment and certainly included within the constitutional limitation on the power of the legislature.”
THEATRES
The question of the rights of Negroes in theatres has given rise to a number of judicial decisions. Fifteen States provide by statute that there shall be no race distinction in theatres. In 1873, the laws of Mississippi, under the Reconstruction government, declared that all persons, without distinction as to race, color, or previous condition of servitude, should have equal and impartial enjoyment of theatres. One Donnell, held in custody for refusing to pay a fine for violating this law by refusing to sell theatre tickets to two Negroes, petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus. The court[283] held that the law was not unconstitutional, because it in no way appropriated private property to public use.
Two years later, in reply to a question whether it was a crime to refuse a Negro equal accommodations in a hotel, Judge Emmons in Tennessee charged the grand jury[284] that the Federal government had no right to require individual innkeepers, theatre managers, etc., to entertain Negroes.
In 1876 a Negro in Louisiana bought a ticket to a theatre, which he was not allowed to use on account of his color. He sued for five thousand dollars damages. The Constitution of that State, at the time, guaranteed equal accommodations in public places. The Louisiana court[285] held that this law “does not enumerate a mere abstraction, but it guarantees substantial rights.” The Negro’s claim was sustained, but the damages were reduced to three hundred dollars and costs. Both this and the Mississippi case arose in the South and were decided favorably to the rights of the Negro, but both came during the Reconstruction régime. Since then, no such case appears to have risen in the South.
In 1889 a Negro woman in Illinois, having been refused tickets to a theatre, had a white man buy them for herself and her husband. On presenting the tickets they were refused admission to seats in the theatre which the tickets called for. At the resulting trial, the proprietor offered to prove that he had, “in order to avoid collision between the races, adopted a rule (and that such rule was necessary) to the effect that the colored people should have one row to themselves in each part of the house, or as many rows as the tickets which they bought would call for.” This evidence was rejected, the court[286] holding that the Civil Rights Bill of Illinois could not be satisfied by separate accommodations.
Missouri has no Civil Rights Bill. A Negro, mistaken for a white man by the clerk in the box-office, bought tickets for seats in the orchestra of a Kansas City theatre. When he presented his tickets to the usher he was refused the seats called for, but was offered in exchange balcony seats reserved for Negroes. The court[287] before which the case was tried held that the rule of the theatre requiring separate accommodations for the races was not a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The most recent case[288] appears to be a 1905 case in New York in which a Negro was ejected from a theatre by an employee. The proprietor was permitted to show that the ejectment was done while he was away and contrary to his orders, and that he permitted Negroes to enjoy the privileges of the place. A verdict was thereupon found for him, but the case was remanded by the appellate court for a new trial, on the ground that the evidence was improperly admitted.
SKATING RINKS
California, Illinois, and Massachusetts have considered skating rinks of enough importance to include them in their Civil Rights Bills. In 1885 the keeper of a skating rink in Iowa refused to let a Negro use it, and the Negro brought suit. The court[289] held that the exclusion of a colored man from a skating rink not licensed is not illegal. The New York court[290] has held that a skating rink is a “place of public amusement” within the meaning of the statute, so that a keeper of one cannot refuse admission to a Negro.
CEMETERIES
The early Civil Rights Bills of New York, Florida, and Kansas prohibited race distinctions in public cemeteries. This stipulation, however, does not appear in the present statutes of any of the States, except Kansas. Race distinctions in cemeteries are common. The legislature of Mississippi[291] of 1900, for instance, gave the Ladies’ Auxiliary Cemetery Association, an organization of white women, permission to remove the monument and remains of the Negro State Secretary of State, James Lynch, from the white to the Negro cemetery in Jackson, Mississippi, provided it was done without expense to the State.
The Raleigh, N. C., News and Observer of February 20, 1906, quotes the Germantown, Pa., Guide as calling on the people to provide a cemetery where Negroes may be buried, saying that “unless something is done, the bodies of the colored poor will be denied the right of decent burial, for their disposal, of necessity, will be by means of the dissecting rooms of anatomical boards.”
The Civil Rights Bills of the eighteen States have now been analyzed, and the judicial decisions arising therefrom have been considered. It is noticeable that, if one excepts the theatre cases of the Reconstruction period, not a case has come from a Southern State. The explanation must be that those States have never undertaken to require hotel-keepers, etc., to offer accommodations without regard to color: the Negroes have taken for granted that they would not be admitted to such places, except upon condition that they would accept the accommodations set apart for their race, and consequently have not applied for admission upon any other terms. In the other States the courts have, as a rule, interpreted the Civil Rights Bills very strictly. If a place is not specifically mentioned in the statute, courts have been very slow to include it under the general head of “other places of amusement or accommodation.” In other words, this phrase, which is, in substance, tacked on to every statute, is a dead letter. The courts are chary, as they should be, of invading individual liberty and freedom of business. But if a place is specifically mentioned in the statute, the law is not satisfied by offering separate accommodations to Negroes, even though such accommodations are equal for both races in every respect; they must be identical.
RACE DISCRIMINATION BY INSURANCE COMPANIES
Some allied topics may be properly discussed under the general head of civil rights.
Five States—Connecticut,[292] Massachusetts,[293] Ohio,[294] New York,[295] and Michigan,[296]—have deemed it necessary to pass laws prohibiting any discrimination on account of race or color by life insurance companies. All of the statutes are essentially the same. They declare that no life insurance company shall make any distinction or discrimination between white and colored persons wholly or partly of African descent, as to premiums or rates charged for policies; nor shall such company demand higher premiums from colored persons than from whites of the same age, sex, general condition of health, and hope of longevity; nor shall it make or require any rebate, diminution, or discount upon the sum to be paid on the policy in case of the death of the colored person. Such a company is forbidden to add any stipulation by which the insured binds himself, his heirs, executors, assigns, etc., to accept any sum less than the face value of the policy. Massachusetts provides that if a company refuses to insure a colored person making application, it must, upon his request, give him a certificate of the regular examining physician, saying that the refusal was not because the applicant is a person of color, but solely upon the grounds of general health and prospect of longevity as would be applicable to white persons of the same age and sex.
The Connecticut statute enacts that any condition or stipulation in the policy, inserted because of the color or race of the insured, shall be void. Ohio provides that any corporation, or officer or agent of such corporation, violating the provisions of its statute, shall be fined for each offence not less than one hundred dollars nor more than two hundred dollars, but that nothing in the act shall be construed as to require any agent or company to take or receive the application for insurance of any person. New York makes the violation of the law a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of from fifty dollars to five hundred dollars. Michigan goes a step further and declares that anyone violating the law shall forfeit to the State five hundred dollars, to be recovered by the attorney general, and that any officer or agent who violates it shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and punished by imprisonment in the county jail not over one year or by a fine of from fifty dollars to five hundred dollars, or both.
There must have been instances of discrimination by life insurance companies against Negroes, else these States would not have thought it necessary to enact such statutes. The explanation of this discrimination is probably not so much race prejudice as the general belief, based upon statistics, that the Negro, particularly in the colder climate of the North and West, has not the same hope of longevity as the white man, being more subject to pulmonary and other mortal diseases. If the risk of mortality of the Negro is greater, the insurance company argued that it was justified in seeking compensation for assuming this increased risk by charging a higher premium. No case has been found arising under these statutes.
RACE DISCRIMINATIONS BY LABOR UNIONS
The attitude of labor organizations toward Negroes has of late been the subject of much comment, especially by the Negroes themselves, who complain that they are handicapped in the struggle for existence because of the hostility of such organizations. Mr. Baker,[297] speaking of the North, said: “And yet, although I expected to find the Negro wholly ostracised by union labor, I discovered that where the Negro becomes numerous or skilful enough, he, like the Italian or Russian Jew, begins to force his way into the unions.... They have got in, ... not because they are wanted, or because they are liked, but because, by being prepared, skilled, and energetic, the unions have had to take them in as a matter of self-protection.... In several great industries North and South, indeed, the Negro is as much a part of labor unionism as the white man.” There seems to be more opposition to Negroes joining the unions of Philadelphia than most Northern cities.[298]
One would expect to find, where the conflict between white and colored laborers exists, some evidence of it in statutes or court reports. But this resolution of the General Court of Massachusetts,[299] passed in 1904, is the only trace that has been found: “Whereas, the national league of American wheelmen, at their convention held in Louisville, Kentucky, on the twentieth day of February, in the present year, voted to exclude colored persons from membership in said organization, which exclusion affects the members of the organization resident in Massachusetts; Resolved, That the General Court deprecates the action of the organization above referred to, and regards the enforcement of discriminations of this character as a revival of baseless and obsolete prejudices.”
CHURCHES
Colorado is the only State that has undertaken by legislation to guarantee to Negroes full and equal accommodations in churches. The rest have left it to the churches themselves to decide the matter.
It is generally known that during slavery the Negroes, for the most part, attended the white churches, where galleries were set apart for them, were members thereof, and were served by white ministers. After Emancipation, the Negroes withdrew from the white churches and built places of worship of their own. To-day, in all parts of the country, where Negroes live in considerable numbers, they have their own churches. In such cities as Boston, where the doors of all churches are in theory open to every race, Negro churches are found in the Negro districts.
Although there is practically race separation in the churches of the whole country, all the difficulties have not been solved. In 1903, the Freedman’s Aid and Southern Educational Society, an organization of the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, general secretaries of the church department, and leading laymen, met in session in Lincoln, Nebraska. Inasmuch as the purpose of this body was to devise and discuss means of improving the educational opportunities of the Southern Negroes, the churchmen of that race were present in good numbers. Some of the hotels in the city gave notice that they could not allow the colored delegates to eat in the main dining rooms, but that they could furnish them sleeping accommodations and serve them meals in their apartments.[300] It is along this line that the difficulty usually comes.
The Baptist denomination recently organized the General Baptist Convention of America, which held its first meeting in St. Louis in 1905. The next meeting was to have been in Louisville, Kentucky, May 5 and 16, 1906. The executive committee of the convention postponed the meeting for a year, assigning as their reason, or one of their reasons, the fact that they experienced difficulty in securing a church in which to hold the convention, the white Baptists being averse to having the colored members of the denomination assemble with them. It was arranged later that the whites and Negroes should meet in the same edifice, but that the Negroes should be restricted to the use of the balconies. This, however, was resented by the Negroes.[301]
The Presbyterian Church also has had to face the race problem. In its general assembly at Des Moines, Iowa, in 1906, the committee on church policies recommended the erection of a synod in Alabama to include the presbyteries of Birmingham, Levere, and Rogersville, which are composed of colored churches. They had hitherto been included in the synod of Tennessee. The report provoked such a discussion that it was carried over to the next meeting, and no subsequent account has appeared.[302] At the general assembly of 1908, held in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, the question arose again out of a report of the Board of Freedmen’s Missions, some of the members from the North resenting such a separation in the missionary efforts.[303]
The Episcopal Church has probably had the most difficulty with the race problem. This Church has had no separate organization for Negroes. Both races meet together in the annual diocese conventions, without distinction, and participate in the business of the Church. At one of these conventions, held at Tarboro, North Carolina, in 1907, the following resolution was passed: “That the time has come when the welfare of both races in the Southern States requires that each race should have its own ecclesiastical legislative assemblies, and that we urge the General Convention to take immediate action.” The colored clergy and congregations had already expressed their willingness to submit the whole matter to the general convention. In speaking for separation, Bishop Cheshire, of North Carolina, said: “I have come to this conclusion in spite of the sentiments and convictions of a lifetime, and though my mind and conscience compel my assent to this necessity, my heart still clings to the old ideal of a church and a diocese which in its annual gatherings should represent visibly the oneness of all races and colors in Christ.... We must confront the actual facts of the day. I believe that, in one way or another, both the white race and the colored race, consciously or unconsciously, demand a different arrangement of our ecclesiastical institutions. I believe that some separate organization for our colored work is coming in the near future.”[304] At the general convention, which met in Richmond, Virginia, in October, 1907, the question of the separation of the races was much discussed, but the actual outcome has not been learned. It developed in the debate that the Southern bishops desired separation, wishing to be relieved of the burden of the Negroes in their dioceses, while the bishops from other sections preferred the present arrangement, not desiring to be burdened with a class of people not in their dioceses.[305]
The Young Men’s Christian Associations of the Northern cities have to meet the problem of the Negro. The New Haven, Connecticut, people refused to permit Negroes to attend the Y. M. C. A., and a separate building had to be provided for them.[306]
Within the colored church itself there is manifest a conflict between the Negroes proper and mulattoes. There is a town in North Carolina in which they have practical separation in the churches, the black Negroes going to one church and the bright mulattoes to another. A similar separation of the Negroes and mulattoes in churches exists, to some extent, in Charleston, South Carolina. At a Negro Christian Congress at Washington City, in 1906, the chairman of the meeting was charged with removing from the program dark-skinned men and substituting light-skinned men. It provoked such a discussion as to divide the meeting into two factions.[307]
NEGROES IN THE MILITIA
The Brownsville affair—that is, the dismissal without honor, through the order of President Roosevelt, of a whole regiment of Negro soldiers because of the misconduct of some of them and the refusal of the others to testify against the guilty ones, and the championship of the cause of the Negroes by Senator Foraker—has brought into much prominence the question of the Negro as a soldier.
The Southern States have been and are unfavorable to allowing Negroes to serve in the militia. South Carolina,[308] in 1865, declared that persons of color constituted no part of the militia of the State. Arkansas,[309] in 1867, accorded to Negroes all the rights of white citizens, with a few exceptions, one of which was that nothing in the statute should be construed as modifying any statute or common law usage in the State respecting the service of Negroes in the militia. North Carolina[310] provided that white and colored members of the detailed militia should not be compelled to serve in the same companies. Georgia,[311] in 1905, by statute, abolished the colored troops of the State, active and retired, and discharged the officers and men from the military service of the State.
There is very little legislation on the subject in the other States. In 1879, the legislature of Connecticut[312] authorized the commander-in-chief of the State militia to organize four independent Negro companies of infantry to be part of the National Guard. West Virginia,[313] in 1889, provided that, if any colored troops should be organized, they should be enlisted and kept separate and apart from the other troops, and should be formed into separate companies and regiments. New Jersey,[314] in 1895, made provision for four companies of colored infantry, presumably meaning that they should be all colored and kept separate from the other troops.