d not swell his head and he remained the same to
his friends. He became so useful in his parish that there was never a
public gathering of the leading white business men that he was not invited
to it, and he was always on the delegations to all the levee or river
conventions sent from his parish. He was chosen to such places by white
men exclusively; and in his own town he was as safe from wrong or injury,
on account of his race or color, as any white man.

After the trains began to run through Rayville, on the Shreveport road, he
had occasion to visit the town of Ruston, in another parish some miles in
the interior, and as he got off at the depot, a barefoot, poor white boy
asked to carry his satchel. Smith was a fine looking mulatto, dressed
well, and could have easily been taken for a white man, and the boy might
not have known at the time he was a negro. When he arrived at his stopping
place he gave the boy such a large coin that he asked permission to take
his satchel back to the train on the following day when he was to return.
The next day the boy came for the satchel, and they had nearly reached the
depot about train time, when they passed a saloon where a crowd of poor
whites sat on boxes whittling sticks. The sight of a negro having a white
boy carrying his satchel quite enraged them, and after cursing and abusing
Smith and the boy, they undertook to kick and assault Smith. Smith
defended himself. The result was a shooting affair, in which Smith shot
two or three of them and was himself shot. The train rolled up while the
fight was in progress, and without inquiring the cause or asking any
questions whatever, fully a hundred white men jumped off the train and
riddled Smith with bullets. That was the end of it. Nobody was indicted or
even arrested for killing an insolent "nigger" that did not keep his
place. That is the way the affair was regarded in Ruston. Of course, the
people of Rayville very much regretted it, but they could not do anything,
and could not afford to defend the rights of a negro against white men
under such circumstances, and the matter dropped.

I have preferred not to mention the numerous ways and many instances in
which the rights of negroes are denied in public places, and on the common
carriers in the South, under circumstances very humiliating and degrading.
Nor have I cared to refer to the barbarous and inhuman prison systems of
the South, that are worse than anything the imagination c