f humanity;
conditions will become fixed and there will be no way for those who are
down to rise. Hope will depart from the bosoms of the masses. You will
be a great but a soulless race. This will come upon you when your heart
is cankered with caste. You will devour the Negro to-day, the humbler
white to-morrow, and you who remain will then turn upon yourselves."

Tiara paused and glanced around the court room as if to see how much
sympathy she could read in the countenances of her hearers. The rapt
attention, the kindly look in their eyes gave her courage to take up a
question which the situation in the South made exceedingly delicate,
when one's audience was composed of Southern white people.

"One thing, Mr. Judge, wells up in me at this time, and I suppose I will
have to say it, unless you stop me," said Tiara, in the tone of one
asking a question.

The judge made no reply and Tiara interpreted his silence to mean that
she was permitted to proceed.

Said she: "You white people have seen fit to make the Negro a stranger
to your social life and you further decree that he shall ever be thus.
You know that this weakens his position in the governmental fabric. The
fact that he is thus excluded puts a perennial question mark after him.
Furthermore the social influence is a tremendous force in the affairs of
men, as all history teaches. To all that goes to constitute this
powerful factor in your life as a people, you have seen fit to pronounce
the Negro a stranger. The pride of the Negro race has risen to the
occasion and there is a thorough sentiment in that race in favor of
racial integrity.

"So, by your decree and the cordial acceptance thereof by the Negro, he
is to be a stranger to your social system. That is settled. The very
fact that the Negro occupies an inherently weak position in your
communal life makes it incumbent upon you to provide safeguards for him.

"Instead, therefore, of the Negro's absence from the social circle being
a warrant for his exclusion from political functions, it is an argument
in favor of granting full political opportunity to him. When a man loses
one eye, nature strengthens the other for its added responsibility. Just
so, logically, it seems absurd to hold that the Negro should suffer the
loss of a second power because he is shut out from the use of a first.

[Illustration: "'Don't circumscribe the able, noble souls among the
Negroes. Give them the world as a playg