aker,
who was shot down in cold blood, together with his infant babe in its
mother's arms, and the mother and another child wounded, at Lake City,
S.C., for no other offense than attempting to perform the duties of
Postmaster at that place--a position given him by President McKinley;
he must forget also the shooting of Loftin, the colored Postmaster at
Hagansville, Ga., who was guilty of no crime, but being a Negro and
holding, at that place, the Postoffice, a position given him by the
government; he must forget the Wilmington MASSACRE in which some forty
or fifty colored people were shot down by men who had organized
to take the government of the city in charge by force of the
Winchester--where two lawyers and a half dozen or more colored men of
business, together with such of their white friends as were thought
necessary to get rid of, were banished from the city by a mob, and
their lives threatened in the event of their return--all because they
were in the way as Republican voters-"talked too much" or did not halt
when so ordered by some members of the mob; they must forget the three
hundred Negroes who were the victims of mob violence in the United
States during the year 1898; they must forget that the government they
fought for in Cuba is powerless to correct these evils, and does not
correct them.

WHY THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT DOES NOT PROTECT ITS COLORED CITIZENS.

Is due to the peculiar and complicated construction of the laws
relating to STATES RIGHTS. The power to punish for crimes against
citizens of the different States is given by construction of the
Constitution of the United States to the courts of the several States.
The Federal authorities have no jurisdiction unless the State has
passed some law abridging the rights of citizens, or the State
government through its authorized agents is unable to protect its
citizens, and has called on the national government for aid to that
end, or some United States official is molested in the discharge of
his duty. Under this subtle construction of the Constitution a citizen
who lives in a State whose public opinion is hostile becomes a victim
of whatever prejudice prevails, and, although the laws may in the
letter, afford ample protection, yet those who are to execute them
rarely do so in the face of a hostile public sentiment; and thus the
Negroes who live in hostile communities become the victims of public
sentiment. Juries may be drawn, and trials may be had, b