reported that local authorities were reprimanded for interfering
with interstate commerce. At Greenwood there was much complaint
against the brutality of the police, whose efforts to intimidate
negroes carried them beyond bounds. A chartered car carrying fifty
men and women was sidetracked at Brookhaven for three days. The man
conducting the passengers was arrested, but when no charge was brought
against him, he was released.[85]

A Hattiesburg, Mississippi, ticket agent attempted on the advice
of citizens to interfere with negroes leaving by refusing to sell
tickets. Some one called the attention of the general superintendent
to the matter. Thereafter the man was courteous and even assisted
the migrants. Police arrested one or two men at the station, and,
according to one of the men, made the crowd so angry that they swore
they would not stop until all had gone. There are cited further
instances of letters to plantation hands which were detained and
telegrams which were delayed. At Meridian, Mississippi, a trainload of
negroes en route to the North was held up by the chief of police on a
technical charge. It is said that the United States marshal arrested
him and placed him under heavy bond for delaying the train. The
federal authorities were importuned to stop the movement. They
withdrew the assistance of the Employment Department, but admitted
that they could not stop the interstate migration.[86]

One remarked, however, "It will scarcely be possible, to make a
sectional issue of these Columbus convictions, as the charge of
'enticing away of labor' in that country is aimed at certain Arkansas
planters who carried away several carloads of negroes to work on their
places, leaving the Mississippi employers without the labor to gather
or grow their crops. It can not, therefore, be interpreted as an
attempt to keep the negro in semislavery in the South and prevent him
from going to work at better wages in the northern munition factories;
it is only an effort to protect Mississippi employers from Arkansas
planters."[87]

The alarm felt over the exodus prompted the mayor of New Orleans to
telegraph the president of the Illinois Central Railroad, asking that
his road stop carrying negroes to the North. The latter replied that
he had viewed with much concern the heavy exodus of negro labor from
the South during the past year, and, because of his very important
interest in that section, it was not to his advantage to encour