otherhood, and the various church
organizations. These societies were composed entirely of blacks and
have continued with prolific reproduction to the present day. They were
characterized by high names, gorgeous regalia, and frequent parades.
"The Brothers and Sisters of Pleasure and Prosperity" and the "United
Order of African Ladies and Gentlemen" played a large, and on the
whole useful, part in Negro social life, teaching lessons of thrift,
insurance, cooperation, and mutual aid.

The reconstructionists were not able in 1867-68 to carry through
Congress any provision for the social equality of the races, but in the
reconstructed states, the equal rights issue was alive throughout the
period. Legislation giving to the Negro equal rights in hotels, places
of amusements, and common carriers, was first enacted in Louisiana and
South Carolina. Frequently the carpetbaggers brought up the issue in
order to rid the radical ranks of the scalawags who were opposed to
equal rights. In Florida, for example, the carpetbaggers framed a
comprehensive Equal Rights Law, passed it, and presented it to Governor
Reed, who was known to be opposed to such legislation. He vetoed the
measure and thus lost the Negro support. Intermarriage with whites was
made legal in Louisiana and South Carolina and by court decision was
permitted in Alabama and Mississippi, but the Georgia Supreme Court
held it to be illegal. Mixed marriages were few, but these were made
occasions of exultation over the whites and of consequent ill feeling.

Charles Sumner was a persistent agitator for equal rights. In 1871 he
declared in a letter to a South Carolina Negro convention that the race
must insist not only upon equality in hotels and on public carriers but
also in the schools. "It is not enough," he said, "to provide separate
accommodations for colored citizens even if in all respects as good
as those of other persons.... The discrimination is an insult and a
hindrance, and a bar, which not only destroys comfort and prevents
equality, but weakens all other rights. The right to vote will have new
security when your equal right in public conveyances, hotels, and common
schools, is at last established; but here you must insist for yourselves
by speech, petition, and by vote." The Southern whites began to develop
the "Jim Crow" theory of "separate but equal" accommodations. Senator
Hill of Georgia, for example, thought that hotels might have separate
divisions for